The Eye Doctor

13^th March 2015

Dear Cassi,

Yesterday I went to the veterinarian, and today I went back to the veterinarian. I told you that my troubles were not yet over and they had only started. Ire, my little silver gray kitten, was bleeding from her eye, and I knew the morpheme would only last so long.

       

I was the eye doctor’s first client of the day, and still they had me wait before being seen. At this point it was past eleven. It could have been that they had simply started a new sign in sheet, but there were no other clients waiting.

       

They sent me into an exam room and had me sit waiting again. I set Ire in my lap and stroked her back as she purred. I looked around that room noting that all the equipment looked old and the Hooker Green paint on one of the test tools made me think 60s or 70s. It was a hundred and thirty dollars just for the doctor to look at my cat with her eyes. She didn’t take a temperature, but she did shine a light at my cat in the dark.

       

She billed me for a pressure test and she billed me for a dye test. When she took the pressure test she used the same cap for both eyes then threw the little white bit of latex away afterwards. I think she should have changed caps. If Ire had an infection in one eye it just got transferred to the other.

       

It was more than five hundred dollars to walk out of that office, and if I’m late for the next appointment I’ll pay ninety but there’s more. The pain medication they gave my cat was in pill form. There was no way I could wrestle with her to take a pill with her eye swollen and bloody. What if I had hit the eye and damaged it somehow? I had to call my regular vet to see if I could get a liquid pain killer and they obliged.

       

I read up on that eye specialist and she has gotten bad review after bad review. This is kind of to be expected with a veterinarian. I mean, no one likes to pay big bills. The only thing is that when I read one of the reviews she had quoted someone else much less for the same operation.

Do your homework, little sister,

Richard Leland Neal