One 3,000$ eye here last year… corneal scratch where the swelling just was not reducing quickly enough. The actual treatment was fairly modest (banamine, antibiotic and anti-fungal topicals, saline rinse, and some of his own blood separated for serum rinse) but the slow progression caused “several” vet visits–7 visits in fourteen days, including two with after hours charge.
Our vets did give us gold star treatment. To get that level of care as a human patient I’m not sure how much you have to pay, but a lot more than 3k! I would send them a couple of pictures, they would take a look and decide if they needed to see it in person again. Then vet plus assistant, in their truck, generally spending 30 minutes-45 minutes at the barn for each visit just looking at his eye and doing an extra thorough application of all the topicals. On days when it was one of the other vets and not the ophthalmological specialist, they would sometimes text her pictures (even on her day off) and she would reply back right away.
I’m sure it helped that he’s a very sweet patient, always happy to see you (even only out of one eye), and usually makes their job easy.
Only things I would have done different are, 1) get the bottle of liquid banamine first, rather than starting with a tube of paste–you can give the liquid orally and it is cheaper, and 2) since I would have had my own bottle, they could have drawn the first banamine injection from that one, instead of charging for an injection from their bottle. I probably could have saved about 150$ this way.
No insurance as he was 31…it eventually healed up just fine and you can’t even tell it happened.
Large vet service in Virginia, and the beast in question lives at home (probably if I was boarding I wouldn’t have been able to afford it!).
His EPM bills from when he was 10 might have rivaled the eye, but I was only a kid so I have no idea, and I’m afraid to ask my family… (And that treatment paid off, too, he might have a slightly droopy nose when he’s really tired but otherwise perfect health for 20 years.)
