Help save Harper

Beautiful and lovely Harper has now been misdiagnosed 5 times now and sadly we’re still no closer to getting to the bottom of things, but much closer to running out of time as she’s declining fast.

We’ve been to several vets already and she’s currently staying overnight in a specialist hospital.

It all started with noticing weight loss early Jan, but thought it could’ve been from all the longer walkies over the holidays! We then took in a pup until they were rehomed but this particular puppy came into my care vomiting. The next day Harper then also started vomiting, so it was thought to be a bug. The pup got better however Harper continued the vomiting each day. We then went down the route of antibiotics but still to no avail. This now brings us to late Jan/early Feb where she had continued to vomit most days, and lose substantial amounts of weight. The vets were baffled.

The next guess was there could be an obstruction so we were given an urgent emergency appointment at a specialists. This is where they discovered a tumour in the stomach, and the surrounding lymph nodes were swollen.

It appeared to be in a tricky place and where at this point Harper was skeletal and greatly anaemic the chances of her surviving surgery were slim.

The vets sought a specialists opinion on the matter and so we were immediately given an appointment at a hospital where they took samples, x rays and conducted an endoscopy for further answers and how to approach the mass.

It has now been discovered there is no mass, but the oesophagus has distended blood vessels, and that her intestine looks as though it has pin point haemorrhages in it. (Sorry, it’s all been a lot for me and I’m not confident with the medical terms and relaying back the info!!!).

Our next steps are to perform a CT scan to get more of an in depth idea but can’t guarantee there will be answers. If that’s the case then they’d like to conduct a liver biopsy. Again, no certainty they will get answers and an idea of how to treat as the vets are still at a loss for exactly what it could be.

Harper is the most beautifully natured dog and she’s not even 7 years of age yet! This has all happened so fast and there’s still so much to do with her; adventures to conquer and delicious foods to snatch when no one is looking.

I’ve been brought to do this page because where she’s been misdiagnosed so many times, we’ve already spent and awful lot of money. (£7k+ to be exact). She deserves everything and for me as her mum to try any route for her to achieve that.

I know the next route for the scan is estimated around £5.5k, we haven’t been quoted for the potential liver biopsy.

Neither examinations will give a treatment plan - possibly even need further tests - and so we are very anxious of the upcoming costs as they’ve already exceeded the estimates given.

We absolutely know this is a lot to ask but we’re simply not ready to give up on Harper just yet.

*update* We can’t rule out Lyphoma or Inflammatory Bowel Disease just yet. Waiting on her Addisons test results too as that could be affecting her healing.

I picked her up from the hospital last night whilst we wait for test results and she’s still her normal self bombing around looking for food and trying to play with the others :-)