the last four days of our life have been one big, stressful, emotionally exhausting blur - i’d give anything to say they were behind us but we’re still trudging through.
friday was the good kind of stress. the event we hosted, rock n’ roll for pup control, for the pet community center was a huge success – the story of which i’ll save for another day. it was a really fun night and our house was full of amazing energy but by the time saturday morning rolled around we were exhausted and had nothing on the docket beyond spending some quality time at home relaxing and decompressing with the dogs. unfortunately fate had its own agenda and the timeline looked like this:
2:30 pm reilley has a seizure. stinks but we can bounce back just a little more beaten.
7:30 pm we rush dooley to the emergency vet with bloat
12:30 am we return home emotionally and physically exhausted, more beaten
3:00 am zander has a seizure. we’ve been pushed over the edge…we’ve fallen and cannot get up.
dooley had been acting like he didn’t feel great but nothing alarming, especially since we have had a little bug going around since bringing odin home. later in the afternoon dooley stayed inside while we all hung around outside. in an hour and a half span i went inside to check on him 3 times, checked his gums and checked his belly and all was normal…he just seemed to be feeling pretty shitty. while dave fed the dogs i sat on the couch with dooley and again checked his gums and belly and again all was good. about an hour later when i looked at him his belly was enormous and dave & i both knew it was time to hightail it to the emergency vet.
fairly soon after we arrived at the vet dooley crashed and it took some time to get him stable enough for surgery. we knew beforehand that dooley’s spleen was massively enlarged but not the cause. the examining vet was concerned he had a hemangiosarcoma so at this point we were concerned the bloat was due to an underlying condition and dooley may not survive the night. luckily (in this case luckily is a disgusting understatment) when the surgeon went in he found that dooley had a splenic torsion as well as the gastric torsion. the spleen was so large it took his stomach for a pretty big ride and left it massively bruised and battered.
at this point we are in a watching game with dooley. everything is progressing nicely with the exception of his albumin level, which is not rising as it should. it could just be his stomach needs a little more time to heal from all the trauma and will correct itself or worse case scenario he has areas of leakage and will need his stomach resected. we’re voting for the former and are really, really hopeful that tomorrow morning his albumin level will be normal and we can bring him home where he belongs.
there are times in my life when having this family of dogs is an overwhelming responsibility and overwhelmingly stressful and this weekend put me over the edge and i’m sill clawing my way to the other side.
in a move really unlike either dave or myself we decided to post dooley’s crisis on the earthdog facebook page – we figured dooley needed all the good energy he could get and so we swallowed our pride and asked for help. we have been astonished and humbled by the outpouring of love we have received from our small but mighty earthdog community and we wholeheartedly thank all of you. dave vocalized this morning that he felt guilty that we were able to call on all this help while most people don’t have this luxury and i have to agree with him. thank you is a paltry offering but it comes from the heart.
here's doo in healthier times:
Update on 2012-09-11 19:52 by kym colella
first things first...i just talkied to the surgeon and we are bringing dooley home this afternoon - i'll update more when we have the big lug in our clutches.
many people have inquired about reilley and zander so i wanted to let you know they are fine. reilley has developed a seizure disorder over the last few years but fortunately they are spaced far enough apart that no intervention is currently needed. zander has a pretty significant seizure disorder and his seizures were (as chronicled on this blog) very aggressive. since starting him on phenobarbital a few months ago he's been doing well but has had some breakthrough seizures when under stress. we had his pheno levels checked yesterday and they are right where they should be so we're chalking the seizure up to stress...he was likely responding to my through-the-roof stress level.
thank you all for your thoughts and good energy...i'm not sure we would have had this same result with dooley without them and for that i will never be able to communicate the depth of my gratitude.