Feeling gutted/anxiety/sadness about recently adopted out pet.
I'm gutted about an animal that was adopted recently
This is a throw away account. I work front desk as an adoption coordinator and am still relatively new. We adopted out an animal with urinary concerns, which we did tell the adopters she was on a specific diet for this urinary concern when setting up her appointment to meet the animal. I am not sure if any medications that the animal was one for FAA concerns was ever mentioned to them prior.
Background on the animal. When the animal came in, shelter care takers notice urinary issues with missing the litter box and whatever else they noticed (animal had also came in sweet and started becoming agitated with human interaction). They are some point got a urine sample and test for UTI symptoms and she was started on medications (antibiotics and pain meds and a urinary diet), the animal had a follow up urine showing some crystals but it overall looked cleared for UTI concerns at that time.
Despite being clear the animal was still quite agitated with handling so after UTI was cleared they were started on fluoxtine and gabapentin for FAS. The medicine dosing was input in the computer wrongly stating the fluoxetine be given BID, not SID as regularly prescribed, gabapentin was put in correctly with BID dosing. The shelter staff was giving it SID for fluoxetine and BID for gabapentin (the documentation error comes into play only because the prescription label ended up printing with the incorrect dosing instructions, showing BID for fluoxetine)
So, when the pet was adopted (which we were so excited for since the animal had been at the shelter for a while with no interest, and we knew the pet was sweet once they were comfortable), the other front desk staff forgot to hand over the medications after finishing adoption paperwork.
We called them as soon as we noticed but no one answered. I used a text number (not my real number) to see if they would see a text message sooner, to come back before we were closed. I had said in that text if they could not get here until tomorrow that would be okay because the fluoxetine was given in the morning (and to my knowledge) was given once a day. Missing just the gabapentin dosing would not be an issue.
The person did reply to the text stating they would come in the morning, most likely a significant other would pick it up.
Medication gets picked up I verbally tell the instructions for meds based on the labels on the bottle noting to the pick up person that the fluoxetine was showing BID and that I was sorry I said SID in the text, and usually the dosing is SID and I was unaware of this dosing schedule for this pet. And that it was given in wet food, since the adopter had asked that last night in the text. We asked how the pet was doing and they said great, very affectionate and they went on their way. The adopter did text midday about questions on the dosing and I told the adopter if they could send and email with their questions I could try and get a caretaker to answer them (they don't have direct phone lines since they are rarely at a desk). We never got an email during the day or any more messages.
That night we got an email (we were closed) so we did not see it until the morning, asking questions about the dosing and other questions and then stated the pet had not yet urinated since being home. As soon as I saw that emailed I called the adopter and got the voicemail so I left a reply to her questions and said to her if you are getting this and the pet had still not urinated it would constitute a medical emergency and they should contact their vet right away. I then immediately replied to the email and reiterated what I said in the voice mail.
Hours later they replied they were at our emergency vet in the area and that they had a lot of urine taken out of the bladder and were looking at possible overnight monitoring. Then looking for further clarification on the UTI in the med records they could see (our program sends our shelter records digitally). Wanting to talk to the vet that the animal saw etc.
I spoke with the shelter manager to try and not have like anymore people thrown into anything confusion since we had an error with the fluoxetine medication already. They tried calling the adopter and had to leave a voicemail mail. We then replied to the email with the UA results we had and let them know we did not have a vet in staff and we work with the surrounding vets in the area to get vet checks done, so we didn't have a way to connect them with the vet that saw the pet originally.
We haven't heard anything back yet. I have just been gutted about the pet needing this medical care so soon after adoption and at the ER vet... Where things are not cheap. I am assuming the stress of being moved caused this?? I feel bad that the adopter feels mislead by the medication error and I hate that it doesn't make our shelter staff look great for this error.
I'm just struggling with this feeling of sadness for the pet and adopters (but this on top of all our other daily stress of shelter life).
So, I guess just looking for thoughts or feedback or just I don't even know really, had to get it off my chest in the end.
TLDR: pet adopted just a couple days ago had to go to ER vet and adopters already were frustrated about not knowing about pet being on FAS medications, and that we got the medicine label wrong on one of them. I'm just sad for the pet and adopters and I guess I needed to get it off my chest.