Cleo - Medical bills

Hey everyone...over the past month baby Cleo has acclimated an overwhelming amount of medical bills due to a confusing and severe spinal trauma. This week, she is going in for an MRI, spinal tap, and possible surgery or heavy intensive oral medical treatment plan with 24/hour assistance and care. She is being taken care of by a Neurologist here in Miami, as well as a local specialist vet in Fort Lauderdale. We are praying for a full and successful recovery, and will keep everyone posted as things continue to progress. My current pet insurance is not covering some of these larger ticket items, and I am reaching out to friends and family in this hard time. Stephane and I are doing our best to keep our angel as comfortable as possible and get her the best treatment we can find!

UPDATE:

Hey everyone...it’s been a long and stressful day for baby Cleo and her daddies...

Firstly I want to thank you all for your support and prayers during this on-going journey to bring our baby back to full comfort and health! Your help and donations are appreciated more then you understand, the insurance game is a nightmare, but I don’t want to focus on that I want to keep my energy towards Cleo. 

After 8 hours at the Neurologist, a spinal tap, MRI various blood work, heavy anesthesia, various tests I don’t understand, etc. we have some answers, different then all doctors and us expected...

First and most important, she is currently home with me, and resting, she has had a small meal and drinking water normal. She now has a bad haircut from the catheter and spinal tap, but she will always be beautiful ❤️

What she was initially diagnosed with, and what’s going on is much different then any of us expected, specialists included...The spinal tap came back negative for meningitis, and the MRI results came back negative for “Intervertebral disk disease” but the imaging has informed us what’s really going on...(here comes the technical stuff) 

Cleo baby had a sever case of

“Chiari-like Malformation”

complex developmental malformation of the skull and craniocervical vertebrae characterized by a conformational change, overcrowding of the brain, and subsequent partial herniation of the cerebellum through the foramen magnum. This causes compression of the brainstem and cranial cervical spinal cord and results in obstruction of the cerebrospinal fluid channels at the craniocervical junction. Syringomyelia is defined as a fluid-filled cavity within the parenchyma of the spinal cord.

Syringomyelia is the term that describes fluid-filled cavities that develop within the spinal cord causing abnormal sensation in affected dogs.

The lamer terms the doctor explained to me...

Basically her skull is to small for her brain, and there is a deformation pushing into the back of her brain, spraying the “brian fluid” into her spine, essentially “flooding her spine” and collecting in pockets. He said “images a hose, when you turn it on the water runs smoothly but when you put your finger in front of it it sprays inconsistent and everywhere”...Unrelated to the neurological problem, she also has in each leg deformation of the patella, which will require four individual surgeries (but that is an entirely different story ball game)...

As yhis is rare,  the neurologist on duty does not perform the surgery, so they woke her up from anesthesia and we have a follow up meeting on Monday to discuss next steps with a specific specialist in this deformation. Already the have highly push surgery, but when it comes to the brain and surgery things start to get really scary and intense. As you can images we have some HUGE decisions to make, but for now we all need rest, and we will take one day at a time.  So. That is the quick update, and I will make sure to keep everyone in the loop, she has been given medicine to “slow” the production the the “brain fluid” down to make her more comfortable and control (as much as possible, the “flooding”) as well as a pain medicine and anti-inflammatory. 

The three of us can not thank you all enough for everything, we love you so much and both Stephane and I will do everything to give her the happiest and best life we can ❤️