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When my happy and energetic 12 year old got what looked like an eye infection, I didn’t think much of it and took him to the vet. A few x-rays later, that watery eye turned out to be the result of a tumor. I was puzzled. Blue needed to see a specialist.
A few days later, a veterinary oncologist encouraged me when she told me that there was, in fact, something that could be done. But then he started talking about money: It would cost thousands of dollars.
I had already spent about $2,000 in three days at the two vet appointments. The CT scan Blue needed next would be another $2,500, and radiation therapy after that could cost at least another $9,500.
This is a problem that many pet owners face: medical bills for a dog or cat can easily run into the thousands of dollars. But for many of us, these are beloved family members. And 86 percent said they would pay what it takes if a pet needed extensive veterinary care.
This sentiment is more about love than actual math. It was a cold shock to reality when I added up Blue’s projected total expenses on paper. Getting the best treatment available for her tumor could cost upwards of $15,000, and that was if all went well. I had already spent a lot. And it wasn’t clear how much time it would buy him.
The oncologist at NorthStar VETS in New Jersey said they make sure pet owners understand upfront what they’re getting into financially because many people can’t afford that kind of cost — many don’t have enough money in the bank to cover theirs , or their children, medical care. A call like the one I received is usually the heartbreaking beginning of the end of your pet’s story.
Like human health care, veterinary care is a spiraling expense market. According to the American Pet Products Association, pet owners spent $34.3 billion on veterinary care and products in 2021, up from $24 billion in 2010.
And just as with human health care, there are now advanced treatments for pets in various veterinary fields, including dermatology, ophthalmology, orthopedics and, in my dog’s case, oncology.
The founder of NorthStar VETS added radiation oncology to his clinic’s services after his own dog had a brain tumor in 2014. He had to drive from New Jersey to Pennsylvania to find radiation therapy that would cure the cancer, so partnered with a company called PetCure Oncology. to open a radiation center on the NorthStar campus in May 2021.
And that’s where my adopted shelter puppy for treatment ended up a year later.
PetCure provides something called stereotactic radiation. This is standard radiation treatment for humans: In 2015, former President Jimmy Carter had stereotactic radiation for melanoma in the brain; in 2019, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had it for a pancreatic tumor.
For dogs, stereotactic radiation has been available mostly at university-affiliated veterinary teaching hospitals and a handful of private practices across the country. If pet owners live near one of these places and have the financial resources, their beloved animals can receive the same cancer treatment as a former president and judge.
“It’s exactly what humans with cancer get at human oncology centers all the time,” says Ben Chiswick, PetCure’s vice president of operations and growth. “It’s much more precise and impactful than other forms of radiotherapy. The more precisely this beam of radiation can go to the tumor, the less it will touch the surrounding healthy tissue, which is where the side effects come from.”
Stereotactic radiation is done over the course of one to three days, each time with the dog under anesthesia. In Blue’s case, the recommendation was a three-day regimen with cumulative anesthesia and radiation effects that would leave him briefly disoriented and mostly exhausted, but still much better than traditional radiation courses that take place daily over several weeks.
I was lucky to live near this clinic. After spending $5,000 in vet bills for a previous dog leg injury, I had also purchased pet insurance when I adopted Blue II. Over his lifetime, premiums averaged about $700 a year, less than many human health insurance policies cost for a single month. He might never use it, but if Blue needed it, it was there.
Why I will never live without a dog again
I needed him now. When I asked the specialist over the phone if Blue’s pet insurance policy would reimburse me for this type of radiation therapy, the answer was yes. So I gave the CT scan the green light, checked the available credit on my Mastercard to cover the costs until the insurance reimbursement came through, and rushed to get him into the radiation machine faster than his tumor was growing.
More than 100,000 veterinarians work in the United States, but an increase in pandemic pets and high demand for care has meant long wait times for many pet owners. Veterinary oncology is even less accessible. Only about 1,000 veterinarians have degrees in oncology or medical surgery or radiation therapy. Access to one can take four to six weeks across the country, Chiswick says; every place I called near my home in New Jersey said the wait would be two to six weeks just for an initial consultation.
My regular vet told me it wasn’t fast enough. Blue needed us to find a way to do it better.
So, I got up at 3am, drove to the NorthStar emergency department at a time when it was most likely to be empty, and waited several hours while I persuaded them to admit Blue for a consultation. My regular vet had sent his papers and x-rays digitally.
The NorthStar emergency vet told me not to bother waiting; an oncologist could get to Blue that day, or maybe the next day. He would have to sit on the back until, well, as long as they could squeeze him. Luckily, the medical oncologist was able to evaluate Blue later that day.
This dog knows 40 commands and can play cards. A hospital hired him.
Within a week, the CT scan and consultation with a radiation oncologist was done, and within two weeks of the initial trip to my regular vet, the first treatment began. About 48 hours after completing his treatment, he was back to jumping around the park and chasing squirrels in the backyard. It had no side effects other than temporarily needing drops in the eye, which was dry. He had a lump on his face where the cancer destroyed some bone, but he is on the canine version of ibuprofen and showed no signs of discomfort.
The little stinker even found that asking for treats now works for him every time.
What was the cost at the time?
I bought Blue’s health plan on an individual basis when I was a year old. (A growing number of clients, according to PetCure, get pet insurance through their jobs, just like human health insurance.) In its 12 years of life, I’ve paid about $9,000 in premiums insurance The policy paid more than $10,000 for his initial cancer treatment, plus other reimbursements for smaller vet bills over the years. I covered a little more than $4,500 in deductibles and copayments from my personal savings, because I set the insurance at a 70 percent reimbursement rate, to keep annual premiums low.
Of course, if a dog ever has an expensive diagnosis, the math goes against it. My other dog has the same policy. So far with her, I’ve paid more for insurance than I’ve used. And it’s typical insurance: I had to fight for days to get one of Blue’s claims paid in full. Still, I’m glad I got it. I will never have another dog without him.
“Literally every customer we see will benefit from this,” says Chiswick. “It’s the same cost-benefit analysis as in human medicine. You might be throwing money away, or it might save you thousands of dollars.”
According to the American Pet Health Insurance Association, as of May 2022, Blue was among only 4.41 million insured pets in all of North America. In the US, the majority are dog owners with these policies, but we represent a tiny fraction of the 69 million US households with a dog.
Still, the association says, the pet insurance market grew 27.7 percent last year. Based on my conversations with experts and the vet team at Blue, many of the people who buy these policies are like me: we’ve been hit with a big vet bill in the past.
Most important to me was that Blue was still covered if he survived long enough to be eligible for another round of stereotactic radiation. And yes, that was a yes.
Even with $15,000 spent on her treatment, her expected survival time is only six to 18 months. The doctors warned me that Blue will probably be on the lower end of that range because her type of cancer is the squamous cell variety. He’s an aggressive guy who fights back. A second round of stereotactic radiation is only recommended after six months and would probably only take about half the time of the first round.
In other words, if Blue made it to mid-October, he would have the option to go through all of this again, perhaps to help him live through Christmas.
When Blue was first diagnosed, every pet friend I asked for advice said they would do whatever it took to try and save their pet.
One, whose teenager is battling cancer and spends most of her time in quarantine at home with the family dog, said she would go into debt to save that dog’s life right now.
Another, whose father recently completed radiation therapy for eye cancer, said he wouldn’t even hesitate to try to save his two puppies.
A cat-owning friend who survived stage 3 B-cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma said she would, too, in Blue’s case.
A woman who works at my hair salon told me that she once spent $15,000 for a dog’s surgery, without pet insurance, and she would definitely do it again.
As pet parents go, I’m extremely common (and part smart, part lucky) in a position where I really could…