Hope for Jane

Jane is my 8 year old female chihuahua, and she is also my world as well as her one year old brother Ducky! She has been living with my mother recently due to issues with our landlord and came down with a bad case of bloody diarrhea. My mother took her to the vet  immediately and it turned out much worse. Jane couldn’t maintain her glucose levels and was tanking fast. They began a IV drip, and it seemed to work until the next morning. When the vets came in they found her unresponsive and she had a seizure when they began to try to help her. My vet called me later that day and suggested she be transferred to the emergency clinic 20 mins away because he was afraid he would find her dead the next morning because they aren’t staffed during the night but the emergency clinic had a vet on all day and all night. I made the decision to take her in my moms car to the emergency clinic. Upon arrival they took her right in and got her vitals. They also put her on an IV drip for her blood glucose. After an hour and a half of waiting the vet pulled us into a room and told us that he thought it could be Addison’s disease, which the other vet had a blood sample sent out to test for. He also mentioned if it wasn’t Addison’s it could be an insulinoma. We waited for the Addison’s test to come back, negative. He had another sample from after she was removed from the iv drip and sent that away to be tested for the insulinoma. It came back inconclusive because he glucose levels were still too high too tell from the iv drip. So we moved on to the ultrasound.  Again, nothing was found. My vet warned us that there could still be a small  nodule that couldn’t be caught by the ultrasound. He wanted to do a CT Scan, but that would be thousands of dollars. They started her on a steroid, a probiotic, 2 antibiotics, and an antacid. They were able to slowly ween her off the IV drip and the vet told me he thought that maybe she could come home! Meanwhile my mother searched her house, and found Mentos mints laying around, and told our vet. He said it was most likely that, but she’s still not out of the woods. Friday night she came home and came to our apartment. She is on a strict med regimen. She gets 4 meds and eats at 6am, then eats again at noon, then gets 4 meds again and eats again at 6pm. She had a blood glucose test Saturday morning and her levels were normal.  She has an appointment with our vet Tuesday for another check, then we can begin tapering down her medications. When that begins we will know what we are really dealing with here. Xylitol poisoning, or an insulinoma. Xylitol is so dangerous to dogs! It’s in mints, sugar free gum, and some peanut butters. I’m here because this has put me in nearly $4000 worth of debt between the two vets. Jane is worth every single penny, I would do anything to save her but I am afraid I’m a little in over my head. Anything you can spare can help, .25, $1.00, $5.00! She’s my million dollar dog as my dad says! Thank you for reading