| Speed | 07-08-2010 06:43 AM |
Goodbye Pumpkin, we loved you so much
We got our first little girl over 2 years ago. It was love at first sight, and my wife and I loved her with everything we had. A few months later, we got her a companion, her brother Patrick, which was her brother from another litter.
On Sunday, she started vomiting with diarrhea, and we noticed blood in her stool. My wife took her to the ER and they tested her for dehydration, gave her subcutaneous fluids since she wasn't dehydrated too much, as well as antibiotics and a shot to stop the vomiting. We gave her some food after 8 hours as the ER instructed and she held that down. Later, we gave her some more food and she threw it up. We were worried, and later she drank some water and held it down fine, so we thought we just gave her too much food too soon. Monday, she ate a little bit, drank some water, and held that down. But she still had diarrhea, and late Monday night I saw more blood in her stool. Tuesday morning, we brought her to our regular vet. The vet checked her for dehydration, gave her some more subcutaneous fluids, and a stronger shot for the nausea and diarrhea. Later that day, she started shaking and limping when she would walk. We took her to the vet immediately and the vet said the fluids had fallen to her limbs, causing her a lot of pain. She gave her some pain medication and left. During the night, she started to get worse. She was moaning a lot, and when we would put her down, she would just walk a little and other times almost fall over. We called the ER and they said it sounded like normal side effects of the medication. As the night progressed, she started to have these short spasms of her muscles. We took her to our vet as soon as they opened. The vet wanted to watch over her because she would barely stand, just to make sure the pain medicine was out of her system. Unfortunately, he called at 11:00 yesterday morning and said he started to notice bruising under her belly, which was not there when I handed her to the vet. He did bloodwork and found that her blood had almost no white blood cells and was super thick with red blood cells. He suspected poisoning, but we watch them like a hawk and they hadn't gotten into anything. He started giving her fluids to flush out any toxins and thin her blood, but he said he wasn't sure what was going on. He set us up to go to the LSU Vet school in Baton Rouge (they're awesome from everything I've heard), and that we needed to bring her as soon as possible. When we got to the vet's office, she seemed completely unresponsive. They put her in the car with my wife with the IV drip and we drove almost an hour to the LSU clinic. The whole time she had trouble breathing, and we were so scared. When we got to the clinic, it just seemed to be one bad thing after another. Every time the doc came in, she was getting worse and worse. She found the same thing that our vet said, with the blood, and said she was completely unresponsive. They gave her some medicine, and it helped reduce swelling in her brain, and she started to get a little better. The doc wanted to do a plasmid transfusion, but she was still very concerned. We decided to go for it, even though it looked like a bad situation, and when we got in the car to leave, the doc called and said she went into cardiac arrest and they revived her. We rushed back in, and the doc said she was fairly certain it would keep happening. We made the tough decision that if she went into cardiac arrest again, we would just let her pass. We found a local hotel, drove to it, and decided to call to see how she was doing before we got a room. Unfortunately, the doc said she had just passed away after going into cardiac arrest again.
We went to see her and told her our goodbyes, and we had her brother with us. My wife and I cried our eyes out and Patrick sniffed her and then tucked his head into my wife's arms. We drove home in total shock and we've been heartbroken ever since.
We're not sure exactly what happened, but the LSU doc said it seemed like it might be a disease of the intestines that causes it to pass too much protein. She also said her glucose was low, so she might have had another disease that was kicking in at the same time. Since Patrick and Pumpkin are related, we're going to have him tested for it.
Last night our parents came over to be with us, and my wife and I are home and we woke up this morning and just talked for 2 hours at 4:00 AM. She was the first pet that ever stole our hearts, and she was the best dog we could have asked for. We loved her with everything we had, and looked forward to coming home every day for lunch and after work to be with them. Now we have a big void in our lives and we're trying to cope as best we can.
Pumpkin, we loved you more than anything in the world. You were our precious little Spunky Punky and you taught us so many thing in your short life and we are so sad that you are gone. Goodbye Pumpkin, we love you so much. |
