The next time you drop by the hospital, you'll need to excuse our dust! We're beginning a big remodeling project, the first one we've undertaken since we doubled the size of the clinic in 1998, five years after we opened. No, we're not adding any more space this time - the hospital is as big as I ever want it to be - but it's time for a major freshening up. New floors, new paint, and a lot of new equipment is coming, too.
Be sure to tell us what you think about the paint samples we've rolled onto the walls in some of the exam rooms. Our staff poured over color charts for weeks before they picked their favorite colors, but we want them to be your favorites, too. Your vote counts! It's not going to be all white any more.....
We have some exciting new equipment already in place in our surgical and dental suite. Dr. Mary Papacek is busy fine-tuning our new digital dental x-ray unit. There's an old saying that we x-ray to SEE what's going on, because then we know what to do - whereas without the x-ray, we can't see what's going on, and we can then only GUESS what to do. Now, instead of just telling you that your pet MAY need to lose a tooth or two during a dental, we can show you whether we have a problem ahead of time. This allows us to adjust our anesthetic and pain management protocols so that we can provide exactly what your pet needs, in the safest way possible.
The new digital dental unit gives us the ability to see what's going on beneath your pet's gumline and eliminates the guesswork. Dr. Mary can now quickly identify everything from root tip abscesses, to baby teeth that never erupted, to dental cysts, to more serious problems. Once we have obtained the necessary x-rays, Dr. Mary can bring her laptop into the exam room and show you exactly what problems exist and what she can do to resolve them in the safest way possible, to make your pet more comfortable.
And I have a new piece of equipment being built, too - a special padded lift table to use for many of the types of canine bodywork I perform. As many of you know, I am in the process of taking a year-long series of courses in indirect manipulative therapy. These courses will provide me with a tremendously improved ability to treat your pet's neck, spine, hip, leg, and foot problems. I will, of course, continue to utilize veterinary chiropractic and acupuncture for many patients, but the new skills I am learning are head and shoulders above what I've been able to do for patient comfort in the past. The new lift table will allow me to treat patients while they are comfortably resting on their sides, much as they might do at home on your couch! Some of you have already seen the benefits of this new care, especially my agility and competition dogs, and many of my senior patients.
All four of our exam rooms are already equipped with state-of-the-art medical equipment for use during your pet's medical exams. Now we'll add an updated color change and new artwork for the walls. Several of our exam rooms will be re-arranged as we remodel. In order to accommodate my new lift table, we'll remove some of the cabinets from the acupuncture room. We'll also give the exam room nearest our walk-on scales a little more spacious appearance.
Our front office and reception area will get a significant face-lift, too. But don't worry! We'll still have tea and cookies for you, and fresh drinking water and a fuzzy blanket for your pet when you arrive. We DO need your help in deciding what to do about the reception area chairs, though. They date from the time the clinic opened in 1993, and have held up well. They are easy to clean and disinfect, and most people tell us that they are very comfortable. Keeping them would save us a bundle, but our staff is evenly divided, with about half thinking that they really need to go, in favor of new, spiffier chairs. What do you think? Let Michelle or Chani know, the next time you visit us!
We expect our remodeling project to extend into early summer, with the laying of new floors throughout the clinic causing the most need to be flexible. We're working to find a contractor who can do the work in sections and mostly when the clinic is closed. We're very excited about our planned changes and we think you'll be pleased and impressed, too!
Until April, when we'll FINALLY be done with all this snow (I hope)....
Dr. Mitchell
