[EllaJoy]

We lost our Ella on August 22 and this is the first that I have been able to post about it. We have been so heartsick about it especially the way it happened. She got sick with some diarrhea and then stopped eating while we were out of town visiting my mom a few hours away. She has had hypoglycemic issues in the past so I was watching her close and on Sunday night she started swaying and just getting worse so we drove home in the middle of the night to get her to our vet first thing Monday morning. I took her in right away and the vet said they would give her IV fluids all day and her temp was low so they were going to put her on a warming blanket and give antibiotics and something for the diarrhea. She said they would update us throughout the day and that we would need to pick her up at 5 to go home for the night with us since no one would be on staff.

Well no one called us so I finally called at 1:30 only to find out that they couldn't get an IV in because they didn't have a needle small enough for her and they let her sit there all day and go into hypoglycemic shock. The vet left her with a tech who obviously didn't know anything and left for the day. No one ever called us about the IV - we would have picked her back up immediately and taken her elsewhere. We ran over to get her and another vet was just coming in and told us her organs were shutting down and we should immediately put her down because she had less than an hour to live. We were in shock. We took her home to love on her for a little while before she died and she started responding to me and my girls and we fed her pedialyte through a syringe and put her in warm towels. We had her home for 2 hours and her temp went from 94 to 102 which is at the high end of normal. We rushed her to the ER and the doctor diagnosed with her having a liver shunt and said she had been in hypoglycemic shock too long to save her at this point. If she had got the IV - she would have made it through that day and we would be dealing with her shunt but at least we would have had options for her. We are so devastated!!

Our vet really dropped the ball - we should have known about the shunt prior not to mention everything else that happened. She had all the symptoms except seizures. She was almost 6 months old and only weighed 1lb 6 ozs and hadn't gained much at all since 12 weeks. They never mentioned liver shunt to us even with everything I pointed out about her to them. Now I know better - I have learned so much from this board about it.

We are hoping to add another face to our house soon.....but we will always love and miss our little Ella. She was so sweet and good-natured and my baby girl!!