Hi, friends. This is my patient, Henry. Henry is a 1.5 year old Lab who was admitted into the hospital on 8/19 with severe pulmonary blastomycosis, which is a fungal disease that is common in the Midwest. Unfortunately, Henry's disease was incredibly severe on admission to the ICU. Within a few days, he had numerous tubes in him, including two chest tubes, high flow oxygen through nasal cannulas, a feeding tube (NE tube), an IV line, an arterial line, and a urinary catheter. His chest x-rays were completely white when his first set of x-rays were taken, and he had air around his lungs within his chest cavity (pneumothorax). On the third day of hospitalization, Henry took a turn for the worst. He was in severe respiratory distress due to his pneumothorax, and this is when emergency, bilateral chest tubes were placed. A total of 4 liters of air was removed from his chest cavity, and he was placed on continuous suction.
Since then, Henry has improved dramatically. On the sixth day of hospitalization, Henry's arterial line, feeding tube, urinary catheter, and nasal cannulas were removed. He was a normal dog again--howling for attention and bouncing around his kennel-- besides his pneumothorax. Throughout the last few days, we've tried both continuous and intermittent suction of his chest tubes, as well as blood patches. Today, a CT scan was performed, which showed massive improvements of Henry's lungs, however, his right caudal lung lobe is still severely diseased. It appears emphysematous and possibly necrotic, meaning that the likelihood of this healing on its own is low. The original plan was to send Henry home with his chest tubes in place for his mom to suction every few hours while they saved money for his surgery, however, there is no longer a point at which manual suction ends. This means that with every breath Henry takes, his chest cavity is filling with air and compressing his lungs.
The options for Henry and his family at this point are slim and include either surgery to remove the affected lung lobe or euthanasia. Given how much of an improvement Henry has made in such a short period of time and how young he is, we believe that Henry has a good chance at recovery if this lung lobe were to be removed. Henry's family has already spent $8,000-$9000 on his medical bills getting him to this point, however, the surgery itself without any complications is an additional $4000-6000.
Henry is the sweetest boy and is such a fighter. He has allowed us to poke and prod him with little to no complaints and now feels good enough to howl in his cage in ICU when he wants food and pets. Henry's family consists of 5 people, however, Henry's best friend is his 15 year old human who just wants him to be able to come home to run around the backyard and swim again.
Henry would have surgery on Friday, 8/30. Please donate if you can!
With love and gratitude,
Dr. Fenton
**Created with owners consent**