My mother turned me onto this vet, when she had to have her cat put to sleep, I accompanied her. Always hard, Cathy Frye was very professional and kind to my mother and her cat. Later, we took our dog... Read More
My mother turned me onto this vet, when she had to have her cat put to sleep, I accompanied her. Always hard, Cathy Frye was very professional and kind to my mother and her cat. Later, we took our dog Mozart to her for a few years. In early 2019 our dog was occasionally throwing up, and off eating a couple times in a month, so we took him in. She checked, did blood tests, an x-ray to see if he had swallowed anything (again, he got ahold of chicken bones once). We looked together but could not find an obstruction. A few weeks later, he was off eating and threw up blood. We palpated but he was not in pain. Went back in, new x-ray, and now we could see a mass on her spleen. Cathy knew at that moment that it was 95% spleen cancer by the additional symptoms and the now apparent tumor, but she let us explore the possibilities, a hematoma, a few other very unlikely possibilities, but we finally realized what it was. Then I realized she was leading us toward the painful truth very gently but professionally. She said surgery was sometimes possible but it had a low success rate at this stage. Since Mozart was not in pain, and could eat puppy food, we decided to explore other alternative options. As we researched the disease, a painless cancer that is usually only discovered in its advanced stages, and once it gets to a certain stage, it grows very rapidly, we realized that she knew his likely prognosis, and did not want to offer us false hope of a major but likely fruitless surgery (most died 6 months later anyway). We tried some anti-cancer foods and supplements, but this was very advanced. Finally, he began to lose weight, and ever cheerful, still wanted to go with us, but could not. We made an appointment with Cathy, and she helped us say good bye. It gutted us as a family, but she was very kind, very compassionate, and that really really helped us handle it in as sweet a way as possible. It was painless, quick and she let us grieve in the room afterwards for as long as we needed. I am writing this because some others said they had some painful experiences with her, but I had a completely different experience and I wanted to share it. Read Less