Vet Drama on the East Coast

Bringing our boat back to Annapolis was amazing, our boat was in the 2022 boat show there and it was the first place we stepped aboard Momentum 42! Plus we love the city, there is so much history and places to see. We were also going to be here over the July 4th weekend so we felt that being in a navel town during July 4th should give us an authentic 4th of July experience. The down side was having to see the specialist for Zorro. 

All we wanted them to do was remove the growth, test it and give us a second opinion on the Norfolk vet’s diagnosis. They said the best thing to do would be to get a CT scan, three actually, the head, chest and hips. Our first reaction was “no just test this growth”, but then we also were thinking that this is the specialist and we really need to get a definitive diagnosis so best to just do it. 

Zorro had the issues in the Bahamas and has lost about 10% of his body weight and is not eating regularly so let's just do it. $5,000 USD later we get word that the CTs are all clear and he is all good but they recommend that we get the growth removed and tested which will be another $5k and we would need to come back as the surgeon is gone. We are not sure why they didn't remove the growth when they did the CTs as he was put under for those but that would have just made sense. We booked it but then when we got back to the boat and talked about what happened with our hometown vet in Vancouver we just felt like these vets are not listening. 

So Nikki jumped on the phone and started to call around other vets to see if we can just come in and get this growth removed and tested. Finally she gets an appointment and we rent a car to take Zorro in to see his third vet in just a few weeks. This was going to be an all day thing so we dropped Zorro off at 8 am and headed to Washington DC for a quick tour around the US capital. Turns out that you cannot do a quick tour of DC, we only got through half of one floor of the Smithsonian and two floors of the Spy Museum before we needed to head back and get Zorro. It meant that we definitely had to come back one day, not sure when since we are doing the whole boat life thing. 

OK, back to Zorro. We picked him up at around 5pm and the vet felt good about how much of the growth was removed thinking she got all of it nice and clean. She did aspirate it first and that seemed to be clean of cancer but best to wait for the test results. A couple of days later we were having breakfast when the new vet called us with the best news of the year, Zorro was cancer free. The vet decided to make our call first as it was the only good call she was going to make that day. Normally with 10 year old dogs that have big weight loss and a growth the news is not good. We were so happy and a little annoyed that the very first vet in Norfolk did not just do as we asked and check the growth. It could have saved us a ton of time, worrying and money. This whole check-up turned into a $10,500 USD expense. Now that said, we were both happy that we now know for sure that he is healthy as he had blood work, x-ray, CT,  surgery to remove a growth and had that growth tested and all is good. 

This brought an end to our Zorro vet drama but not an end to the US drama that was still to come. We have also decided that we will continue to sail and explore the Chesapeake Bay area. There are so many cool little towns and villages to explore and learn about. The Chesapeake Bay has more waterline than the rest of the US combined, making it an amazing place for cruisers to sail around. But of course we can only do this if the US customs and immigration allows us to stay. While in Annapolis we had a little US immigration issue that I will cover in the next Momentum 42 blog.