Financial writers argue over whether this is a good investment. Last December, I bought a year of pet insurance for about $350. The only thing I knew was that I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t give Oscar a fighting chance.Īnd I didn’t even have it that bad. The urgent demand for split-second, life-or-death decisions had consumed me. It was only later that I could catch my breath and tally it all up.
$1,455, general vet fee for hospitalization and transfusion. $137, general vet fee including histopathology. $815, ER stay including overnight monitoring, IV drip, plasma, and blood filter. $1,378 for initial ER visit including radiology, 12-hour exam stay, fluids and scans. For two days, I shuttled him between general vets and ERs for nightly monitoring, and at each step I was asked to pay in advance for services that had a coin-toss chance of keeping him alive even for a night. I was told Oscar had spleen cancer and hours to live, and, alternatively, that it could be a benign growth pressing on his intestines. I carried him down to the car and then to the nearest 24-hour veterinary ER. So when I finally heard his steel dish clatter across the floor as he licked it clean of boiled chicken and plain rice, I was optimistic that he was on the mend. He’d give my palm a disinterested sniff and turn away. There was a vague list of symptoms that pet owners fumble to describe before settling on “just not acting right.” I was waiting on a blood test, slipping him anti-nausea meds buried in peanut butter, and hand-feeding him kibble in the hope he’d eat something. I know it was Memorial Day, because the first thought I had was that the banks were closed. I was such a wreck that I can’t tell you what time I left my dog, Oscar, in the emergency room that first night.
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