2157. The old German Shepherd is scratching furiously

Monday, March 18, 2015
After 2 days of scratching from nose to paws, the owner phoned me for help. The 2nd sister had given this dog a piece of chicken on Mother's Day and now the dog keeps scratching her body.
She was fed only meat and rice nowadays and was all right. If fed commercial dog food, she would have diarrhoea and itchy body.

This old German Shepherd has bad hips and could not stand up if the carprofen injection under the skin is not given every 2 weekly. She got this injection from another vet every 2 weeks, not wanting to bother me. Lately she had her cataract operation on one eye first. As the surgeon had been on medical leave, after operating on 150 cases in one day, she saw her relief surgeon. She was a popular in great demand surgeon and had to take leave. So she packed the previous day's cases to the next day, totalling 150 cataract operations.

The relief surgeon read her medical notes and said: "It is lucky that you had opted for the mono-foal lens instead of the multi-focal as you have scars in your retina."

However, the surgeon had actually recommended multi-focal lens and she had accepted this advice. In multi-focal lens, you don't need reading spectacles. However, 3 days before the surgery, we went to my family optician, an experienced man in his 50s. He said: "Some of the people having multi-focal lens suffered side effects of seeing flashing lights and get depressed. There is no cure for this. Taking out the multi-focal lens and replacing a mono-focal is not that easy as in the first implant. With mono-focal, you need to have prescription lenses to read but you don't have these flashing lights."

So, this owner was very unhappy with the surgeon.