WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Is health care going to the dogs? (Or cats?)
Nope, it's not. By way of example we offer up the case of one S.W., a 14-year-old feline who was adopted by his loving owner when he was just a few weeks old and an abused castaway living outside an abandoned building in North Carolina.
A few years ago, S.W.'s "mom" — we will honor patient confidentiality here and not divulge full names at the family's request — noticed he was beginning to pull out his hair and eat it. "He had bald spots all over."
Off he went to a vet in North Carolina, where the family still lived at the time. S.W. was told to change his diet and take medication for his "nerves," which didn't help much.?His mom held back on getting tests done until she finished moving to Florida — but by then the economy had crashed.
Fortunately, S.W. seemed to be improving, "but he needed his vaccines," his 75-year-old owner recalled, "so I got out the Yellow Pages."
She found herself a terrific vet, but she also found out that S.W. was not recovering sufficiently: He began to vomit incessantly, until "his little chin was all swollen." She tried hairball medicine, antibiotics, X-rays, "and that's when the vet saw little slivers of bone in his intestine."
He needed more tests.
And there's the rub. "What he really needs," his owner said, "is something I don't have. Money."
The tests would cost several hundred dollars, at least. She is on a budget. She is devoted.
She is not alone.
Nationwide, pet lovers worry about how they will pay the tab for everything from routine vaccinations to the mind-boggling array of diagnostic tests and sophisticated treatments now available not only to humans but also to "patients" who hail from the kingdom Animalia.
"I used to hand people a $300 bill and say I'm really sorry about this," said vet Xavier Garcia, who owns the El Cid Animal Clinic in West Palm Beach. "Now, it's more like $1,500. People want the best for their pets, but guess what? The best comes with a price."
"We're looking at this and going, wow," said Mark Kumpf, past president of the National Animal Control Association and director of a county animal shelter near Dayton, Ohio, where "surrenders" are up 20 percent. "It's very scary."
Even beloved family pets are being given up, Kumpf said, and sometimes their owners don't want to admit why.
"The person at the counter might say, 'This is a stray, I found it.' But then you notice the animal is immaculately groomed and the children are crying, and you know they're too embarrassed to say, 'This is our family dog, we love him, but we can't care for him.'"
Vets for their part often try to find solutions by presenting owners with less expensive treatments — "going coach instead of first class," as Garcia put it. They might recommend pet insurance or credit programs to customers who qualify, or even offer reduced-fee clinics.
Boca Raton, Fla., veterinarian Marcia Martin did just that on Sunday when she hosted a pets-in-need clinic that offered full exams and vaccines.
"We really wanted to find hardworking people who under normal circumstances would pay for their pets' care but now just can't," she said. She found them, all right.
One woman who called to inquire about the $25 clinic said she was squatting in a condo with two dogs and no air conditioning; another said she was a stroke victim who had not yet qualified for disability and was losing her home to foreclosure.
"These are real stories," Martin said. "Real people."
Real pets.
In a country where 77 million dogs and 93 million cats shack up with humans, the trickle-down effect of a crisis economy is unavoidable.
"I'm seeing more people forgoing annual exams and vaccinations, which means I'm seeing a lot more ill pets," said veterinarian Celia Oberto of West Palm Beach. "Instead of catching something early, I'm catching it late."
Canine parvovirus, highly contagious and potentially deadly, is on the rise, she added, because more people are skipping the relatively inexpensive vaccines. This summer, Florida and Mississippi struggled to control outbreaks.
While some vets worry about going out of business if they forgive too many debts or cut too many deals, some animal lovers fret — or seethe — that they're getting hit up with unfair charges.
A veteran stable owner and barn manager in Palm Beach County said she has found that "what used to be a $100 call is suddenly $300 or $400. The vets come out and they find all these things to do to the animal.
"The final bill is absurd, and they want to be paid immediately. They call and call and call until they get it.
"It didn't use to be that way."
Well, true.
In this world, very little is the way it used to be, and yet, occasionally, miraculously, against all odds, a happy ending pops up out of nowhere and a member of the kingdom Animalia wins a reprieve.
This just might be the case with S.W., the vomiting cat.
His adoring mother had just beseeched family members to help pay for an expensive ultrasound should S.W. need one when something unexpected happened.
The little guy started to get better.
"It's too early to say for sure," his mom said. "But I think he's going to be fine. Isn't that wonderful?"
It is indeed. And cheaper, too.
Christine Evans writes for The Palm Beach Post. E-mail: christine(underscore)evans(at)pbpost.com.