Cal Loses His Tail

Hi everyone, If you know me, you know that Calvin is my baby. I’m just as attached to him as he is to me and he’s been my partner in crime now for 5 1/2 years. That being said, any pet parent will know how sad I am to have my doggo in pain and not know what the cause is or how to fix it. On April 25th, I came home from work and Cal was acting off; just not like himself. He wound up having three accidents in the house that night and every time he was just standing there with this “I don’t know what’s happening” look on his face. So the next day, I took him to the vet. When I get there, I notice that he has a little bit of blood on his tail. After I tell the vet what is going on, she takes blood and urine tests and proceeds to shave Cal’s tail. Upon shaving his tail, we notice abrasions in the middle. No one can determine what it is because there are not clear bite marks. She wraps his tail, prescribes him some meds and I set a follow up appointment for next week. A couple of days later, the base of Cal’s tail is now bleeding and he is clearly in a ton of pain. I take him to the vet again, she shaves his whole tail this time and it is covered in abrasions. She tells me the results of the tests all came back normal and now she’s going to do a culture because she thinks it could be MRSA. She wraps his whole tail and sends me home with more meds. Two days later we have a follow up appointment. Cal’s tail is severely bloody and has puss oozing out of it. The vet wants to see if it’ll clear up some because he’s responding to the antibiotics- they now think it’s a brown recluse bite. Now we’re caught up to today. Cal had his follow up appointment and unwrapped, you can see the tendons in his tail. The skin around his abrasions is black, cold and dead. This time they don’t send me home, they send me to the pet ER. Calvin needs to have his tail removed because the bottom half of it is dead and we don’t want this spreading to the rest of his body. They don’t know what it is but the ER vet threw out some really bad healthcare diagnoses that I don’t want to think about, all the way to the circulation just getting cut off to his tail. I’m super sad that my baby is going to have a nugget tail. I mean, I’m sure he’s going to look adorable and be in a lot less pain but he’s going to have to go under tomorrow for the surgery and that’s making me extremely nervous. Calvin’s vet bills are already in the thousands and are projected to be pretty high. Anything anyone can do to help is really appreciated from the bottom of my heart. And if you can’t help, please at least send prayers, good vibes, or whatever you can! Thank you for reading this. Katie