Keeping a Pet Diary--Getting the Right Diagnosis

Don't work with incomplete or misleading information

We’ve been discussing how difficult it is to get the right diagnosis for a pet’s illness and have identified 5 problem areas:
1. Working with incomplete or misleading information
2. Being presented with a pattern of illness that isn’t normal or typical
3. Grabbing onto a major symptom and thinking that’s where the focus should be
4. Considering the problem only in light of what local pets develop
5. Using stereotypes such as breed or age

Today, we’re going to discuss how keeping a pet diary will help so that we don't misdiagnose a pet's illness because of the first problem: Working With Incomplete or Misleading Information

Poor Memory
One reason we may have incomplete or misleading information is that the family cannot remember the pet’s history. For example, if we’re trying to figure out why a diabetic cat cannot be regulated to maintain normal blood sugar levels, and the family cannot remember whether the cat is always fed before she’s given insulin, we have incomplete information with which to try and diagnose the unregulated sugar levels.

To help prevent incomplete information from contributing to a misdiagnosis, keep a pet diary and write down what’s important in your pet’s life. Diary information should include:

• When it gets fed


• What it eats


• What stools and urine are like


• When and what medications are given


• When and what type of exercise it receives


• When it gets sick


• What you see that tells you the pet is sick: fever, lethargy, vomiting

Pet diaries help with every medical condition
If your pet is healthy, there’s not much work for you to keeping this diary, but if your pet has a chronic illness, such as epilepsy, diabetes, or feline urinary tract disease (FLUTD), there will be lots of useful information that you can list. Take your diary along when your pet needs a medical review, and it will help your pet get the right diagnosis and therapy.

Blood and diagnostic tests prevent misdiagnosis
Allow your veterinarian to take the blood and diagnostic tests necessary to identify the problem. Ask to have tests reviewed by pathologists and radiologists to ensure your pet gets the help of experts. And, realize that no test is perfect, so expect that 1 of 14 tests will be inaccurate.

What's coming?
We’ve discussed the first problem that leads to misdiagnosis (Working With Incomplete or Misleading Information), and in the next Caring for Pets blog entry, we’ll cover the second problem: Being Presented With A Pattern Of Illness That Isn’t Normal or Typical.