Help save Sasha Bear!
Summary: Sasha has a septic abdomen following emergency intestinal surgery requiring her to have additional surgery to remove the infection and an additional stay in the ICU post-surgery.
Update: Bacterial free fluid was found in Sasha’s abdomen and she does need to have emergency surgery to remove the infection.
My sweet Sasha Bear had a routine tooth cleaning and extraction last Monday (3/2) and was given pain medication following the procedure but didn’t have much appetite and showed signs of nausea. As many dogs do, she wanted to eat grass to induce vomiting in her nauseas state. As an indoor alternative, she chewed and ate a considerable piece of carpet from a rug. She appeared fine after, but on 3/6 during our flight from Philadelphia (where we go to school) to Houston (home) she started showing signs of pain, lethargy, and severe diarrhea. The day after the flight, she stopped eating at all and I knew something was very wrong. After calling every animal hospital in the area, I finally brought her to the small animal hospital at Texas A&M. She was diagnosed with an obstructed intestine and had to undergo emergency surgery to remove the obstruction. She had a gastrostomy, resection and anastomoses of a piece of her jejunum (her small intestines). After surgery, she had complications with vomiting and regurgitation and had to stay three nights in the ICU, incurring is a $5000 veterinary bill. Wednesday, 3/11, we were finally able to bring Sasha home! She was eating canned food, taking her meds, and seemed to be feeling better. Unfortunately, this was short lived. On 3/12 Sasha stopped eating again and resumed her bouts of vomiting. We brought her back to the emergency vet at Texas A&M and they said that she is showing signs for sepsis. She is currently staying overnight in the ICU to monitor, which will cost additional thousands of dollars in itself. If she does have to have emergency surgery to fix the sepsis from a perforated intestine, the cost will rise to >$7000. After just spending thousands on her two surgeries in the past 2 weeks, I simply don’t have the mandatory 1/2 of the $7000 estimate in order to go ahead with treatment.
Anyone who knows me knows how much Sasha Bear means to me. She’s the best dog in the entire world-my emotional support animal, best friend, and what has gotten me through a tough few years at Penn. I would do anything to be able to take away her pain right now, and I would really appreciate any help in allowing me to do so!