This incident was a really tough and terrifying one for us and we weren’t ready to publicly share about it while the worst of it was occurring. We aren’t the type of people to ask for help in this way, but now that we are *hopefully* nearing the end of this nightmare, we have a more clear idea of what happened and what it is costing us, I wanted to reach out to our community for a little support. 

So here are the details: Stormy, our 14 month old German Shepard, went in for a routine cryptorchid neuter. He was under anesthesia for longer than expected, during which time his stomach acid started draining through his nose, which burned both his esophagus and his nose. The doctor gave him some medication to help with acid reflux and he was recovering fairly well. But around the time he finished all his medications, he started vomiting/regurgitating all food and water. We tried fasting him, adjusting his diet, all the things, until the point a week later when it became clear that he was rapidly losing weight, unable to even drink water, and still constantly regurgitating foam. 

At this point, we went back to the vet to take blood work and X-rays – none of which showed anything was wrong. So they recommended an ultrasound, which would require going to an emergency pet hospital.

When he got to the hospital, it was clear he was fading and emaciated. He was 70lb before this and had dropped down to 55lb in a single week. Stormy got an ultrasound, which also showed nothing, but when they ran bloodwork, they noticed his kidney levels were significantly low, which could mean kidney failure. They immediately put him on IV fluids and checked him into the hospital where he would stay for the next 5 days.

After 3 days of hydration, his kidney levels returned to normal and we could start moving forward with the next diagnostic step – an endoscopy. So on day 4 of his hospital stay they put him under general anesthesia and scoped him. What they found was scar tissue on his esophagus, called a stricture. This stricture closes up the esophagus making it difficult for food to get into the stomach. And this stricture was likely caused by his previous surgery and subsequent acid reflux. To remedy this problem, they inflated a balloon in his esophagus to break up the scar tissue and expand the opening.

He came out of anesthesia with no complications and was given a feeding tube so that while his esophagus was healing, he could start gaining some weight back. He was released the next day and came home on Christmas. Since then he has needed round the clock feeding and medications through a tube. Thankfully (?) we were both on holiday break so we were able to provide that. 

A few days later he had another endoscopy to make sure the stricture wasn’t closing up, and ended up ballooning it one more time, but overall it looked like he was healing nicely.

That brings us up to today. We have a third endoscopy coming up just to be sure that things are healing correctly, and if it is, that will hopefully be the end of his treatment.

He is still on liquid food and he is finally getting his weight, strength, and puppyness back and eating ravenously! He cleans out 8-10 cups of food a day – which is getting a little pricey since it’s a prescription diet. Hopefully this is the end of this traumatic incident and we are done after this!

In the moment, we were committed to getting him better. He is a puppy, and one we have put significant emotional, financial, and time investment into. We took out a 6 month line of Care Credit that we have maxed out, and with a new baby coming and a single household income, the gravity of the expense is really hitting hard. The total we have spent so far is about $11,000. I am so grateful that we were able to even take out that kind of credit to save our dog’s life, I know not everyone has that option. I have posted a goal of $5.55k because cutting this bill in half would be wildly helpful.

As far as the original vet who performed the neuter surgery, we are looking into the procedure in great detail to see if there was any negligence on their part. If anyone has experience with this area of medicine or law, please reach out.

Thank you for reading all this and any help is so appreciated. This happened during the holidays and I really didn’t want to bombard people with this, especially until we had a better picture of what was going on. We appreciate you sharing this fundraiser as well.

If there is a lesson here, it is to get pet insurance.  I always thought it was too expensive to ever be worth it, but I have found that there are very inexpensive plans out there that could save you thousands of dollars if your pet ever ends up in the hospital for something serious. So please, if you have pets, get some insurance. There’s nothing harder than having to put a price on the life of someone you love.