Bella’s Surgery

As many of you may know from my previous post, our baby Bella has been very sick for over two months now. She started having accidents in the house in early February, something she has never once did in her life. She picked up potty training instantly when she was a baby. We immediately took her to the vet, expecting her to have a UTI or bladder infection. She tested negative for both. Her drinking had increased significantly and her accidents were daily. We knew something was wrong, but after numerous blood and urine tests, her vet could not figure out what exactly was going on. Bella’s regular vet referred us to an Internal Medicine Specialist.

We saw the Internal Medicine Specialist who performed a round of more intricate testing on Bella before we moved on to the next step, an ultrasound. Bella was put on antibiotics in case this was an infection somewhere. All her tests came back negative once again, and the antibiotics did not change anything, as she was still having accidents, even more frequently at this point.

One night while I was home alone with Bella, I noticed her acting a little funny. She seemed out of it, and her head and eyes started twitching. She tried to get up to walk and her back legs would not work for her. She had no balance, was stumbling and falling, and started to vomit everything that was in her stomach. We rushed her to an emergency vet, where they did more tests and found that her blood sugar was very low, but also that her white blood cell count was extremely high, which was a sign of a severe infection somewhere in her body. They gave us stronger antibiotics for Bella and advised that she receive an ultrasound ASAP.

We were able to get Bella in to the specialist two mornings later for her ultrasound. Her ultrasound showed a 3.8 cm mass/cyst on her spleen and an abnormally small liver. They advised that we bring her back in fasted so they could perform a biopsy on the mass and test her liver function. The biopsy was not conclusive enough to confirm if the mass on her spleen is indeed cancer or not. It is typical for cysts to be found on a spleen, but because of the size of the surrounding cells, the pathologist deemed it “suspicious”. Her liver was found to be responsive, but they are not sure at exactly what percentage it is performing at currently.

During this time, Bella has continued having accidents daily and her condition seems worse every day. She often has low blood sugar episodes like the one that caused us to rush her to the emergency vet, and because of this we have been staying home with her to monitor her as much as possible. We have missed days from work because we didn’t feel comfortable leaving her, we regularly have to force feed her baby food with a syringe just so she will have something in her stomach as her eating is up and down, and we wake up multiple times in the middle of the night to take her out so she doesn’t wet the bed. To say that we are exhausted is an understatement, but we are doing everything we can for our girl to be better.

At this point, after all her tests, ultrasounds and procedures, she now needs surgery to remove her spleen, as this is the only thing they are finding in her body that could possibly cause all of this. We were told on Monday during a consult with a different vet that since Bella’s case is so intricate, the Internal Medicine Specialist is the only one who has the resources needed for Bella in case of a blood transfusion during surgery, so because of this we will need to have her surgery performed by him. Because he is a specialist, and because they want to keep Bella in the ICU for 24 hours after surgery as they are not sure what condition she will be in coming out of this, the surgery is going to cost over $3,000. We are in a very tough spot, as we have already spent over $3,000 just on all of her tests, visits, ultrasounds and procedures up until this point, just trying to get an answer as to what is wrong with her.  We know that Bella needs this surgery as soon as possible to not only feel better, but so  we can know for sure if the mass is cancer, if it looks like it has spread to other organs, the efficiency in which her liver is performing, and next steps moving forward for treatment.  Anything at all will truly help us get our fun and energetic girl back to feeling like herself again and will be so greatly appreciated. Even just prayers for our baby would mean the world to us. Thank you all so much and we love every one of you ❤️