Hi, my name is Gayle and I'm Grace's human mom. I'm not one to ask for financial help from anyone, but I'm swallowing my pride and asking for help now as many of us have been in an unexpected, horrible, and financially devastating situation with our animals no matter how prepared we think we are. Life throws a wrench in there. Last Tuesday, in an unpredictable and horrible incident, Grace was involved in a fight with another dog in the home. I didn't witness it and don't why it started or which one started it. Grace was critically injured and I thought I would lose her before I got her to my vet, about 50 minutes away. They were only able to stabilize her and referred me to the 24/7 ER Animal Hospital up in Colorado Springs, another hour away. My vet didn't think she'd survive the trip but she did.

Grace's throat was torn open, exposing her jugular vein, trachea, and esophagus. She also had a penetrating chest injury and her chest cavity was filling air causing difficulty breathing. After the ER vet evaluated her and consulted with a board certified surgeon, they both felt that despite the severity of her injuries, her chances of surviving the surgery and subsequent recovery were good. She went into surgery that afternoon.

There was no damage to the structures in her throat and it was all soft tissue. The wound to her chest only penetrated the chest cavity and not the lung itself but she had significant bruising to her right lung. She does have a couple of fractured ribs and sternum. She came out of surgery with drains in both sides of her chest as well as her neck. Because she had been under anesthesia for 3 1/2 hours, the surgeon just cleaned and bandaged 3 other less severe lacerations and said she wanted to let Grace recover a bit before taking care of those.

Wednesday night, her albumin level dropped enough to cause some edema to develop and they did a plasma infusion to help bring it back up. She also had to have a feeding tube put in because she wasn't eating. Despite that, she continued to improve in small steps. She had been getting up and moving around and going potty on her own since Wednesday evening.

The surgeon stitched up the remaining lacerations yesterday and pulled the drains in her throat and the left side of her chest. She still has the drain in the right side but I got to bring her home last night and I'm monitoring the fluid output. I have to take her back up Tuesday so they can check everything.

I had to pay up front for the initial low estimate for her ER treatment, $4300, which I was able to get a Sratchpay loan for. The initial low surgical estimatel of $5200, I had to put on a credit card. Her final ER bill was another $4900+ which maxed out my credit cards. I won't have a final bill from the surgeon until Tuesday. I was able to get some money from my retirement account but not enough to cover the whole cost her treatment.