Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

Tuesday last week I take Rupert in for a follow-up x-ray and exam. The blood workup is much worse, as we expected - his cancer is getting worse, pretty simple explanation. The x-ray is showing an improvement in his lungs, the antibiotics and steroids at least helped there, but we were fairly confident the cancer did not originate in his lungs - very rare for dogs to have lung cancer.

We expect a two to three day turnaround for the consulting radiologist to review and report back on the x-rays. Thursday at the earliest, should definitely be done by Friday. I stop by Friday and ask for the reports. They take my info - which is already on file - and promise they'll be emailed to me.

Later, I get a text saying that their x-ray machine is down and they can't email the DICAM files to me.

Fine, whatever.

I call Monday and ask them to email me the radiologist report. Information is again given. And again, nothing happens.

Yesterday, I'm sick as a proverbial dog. My immunologist tells me to get tested for flu/covid/strep, I go to urgent care as they can do all three in 15 minutes. All are negative, they're culturing my throat to see what can be learned and I'm on a week's worth of antibiotics pending the result. I was running a 100f fever briefly Monday night and feeling all sorts of crappy.

Today on the way home from work I stop by the vet. And a somewhat annoyed woman comes out of the back with something along the lines of 'We texted you saying that the machine is broken, it's being worked on right now.' I tell them that's fine, does that preclude you from printing out the radiologist report?

THEY. HAD. NOT. SENT. IT. TO. THE. RADIOLOGIST.

NINE FUCKING DAYS HAVE PASSED SINCE THOSE X-RAYS WERE TAKEN. NINE FUCKING DAYS.

AND NOW THE X-RAYS ARE BEING SENT TO THE RADIOLOGIST FOR REVIEW.

That, of course, assumes they can get the machine working!

If I'm lucky, I might have them by Friday. If not, early next week.

We have spent over $1,300 on trying to get Rupert cared for at this place. And we've never been able to get x-rays and radiologist reports promptly sent to us.

They're not going to see another dime from us. There's lots of veterinary clinics in this town, some we've used before with good results. And we've used this one before with good results, they saved Celete's life some 14 or 15 years ago. But we're never going to use them again.