Vet bill for Artemis' emergency splenectomy!

We're keeping this page updated with Artemis' progress, scroll down to see all her updates!

Artemis had emergency surgery on Aug 18, 2023, to remove her spleen, multiple tumors, and 1.5L of leaked blood from her abdomen. She's at home recovering and is doing remarkably well, but the vet bill is significant.

The Story:

We've had our 8-year-old Rottweiler, Artemis, since she was 7 weeks old. She's my partner, my 5th kid, the dog that turned me into a completely nutty dog lover. She's a perfect part of our family and I hope to keep her with us for a while yet.

On Aug 13, 2023, she wouldn't/couldn't physically get up in the morning. She was responsive, and it seemed like her arthritis was bothering her. By 2pm, she hadn't moved 20 feet, wasn't interested in eating, drinking, or peeing, and was quite bloated in her belly, so I called our local vet, where we saw a visiting vet (we are very, very rural, sometimes there's no vet on call). We went home with antibiotics and pain meds. That bill was ~$600 plus another ~$100 for urine tests later in the week.

Artemis slowly started acting more like herself but was still very weak and bloated. On Aug 18, 2023, we went in and saw our normal vet and got an ultrasound (that was not done on the 13th), where they found blood where there shouldn't be in her abdomen.

She went immediately into emergency surgery where they removed her spleen which had multiple tumors, a couple that were leaking/bursting, and cleaned up 1.5L of leaked blood from her abdomen. The vet also visually inspected as many organs as he could for signs of metastasizing (spreading cancer), which he thankfully reported that he did not see. They are sending the tumors out for testing and we will know if they're benign or malignant soon.

This is the original quote I received, the whole bill can be seen in the updates section on Aug 20th.