kazzy220
..........
- Jul 31, 2010
- 8,556
- 441
- Country
- England
- Bulldog(s) Names
- Maggie (My Angel Baby 5/31/2012). Daddy (2 years). Linus (1year). Bella (4 years)
Well pardon my french ... but it's been a real 
of a week when all is said and done!!!
Soooo............... I get home on tues night and all is fine, make dinner, and just as we sit down to eat, Linus throws up. Then he throws up again. And again. Then a bit more. Again. we eat dinner. Throws up again. Again. Once more. Again and finally again. Ten times. In between he's all happy and smiles for the most part. Tom is freaking out, and I'm trying to stay calm because he is perfectly normal apart from this sudden interest he has in playing the lead role in the exorcist. Now if his head had started spinning it would be a different story!!
So I stay up with him and at 2am he hasn't thrown up for a long time and seems very very sleepy so we all go to bed.
In the morning, he's perfectly fine. Hadn't thrown up at all during the night and by now 6 hours had passed.
So I cook up some white rice and a little beef ... and he has the bland diet for breakfast. Tom was off that day because we are getting quotes for a new garage door, so off I toddle to work. Then at 9am I get a call from Tom that Linus has thrown up three times since breakfast. Off to the vet he goes.
Now, for those of you who have missed my previous posts ... Linus is known to eat anything that is not nailed down and/or has not got a pulse. I thought I had seen an improvement in this behaviour but maybe not.
The vet immediately takes x-rays suspecting a blockage, and returns with them pointing out what they are confident is a blockage of some sort. So Linus ate something. The vet does mention enemas to see if the blockage will move, but is still pretty sure there is a blockage on the x-ray. I wasn't in the room, but for whatever reason Tom is convinced that surgery is immediately necessary. Total cost right now is $2400.
Many many hours pass, and I'm so impatient that I call and happen to catch the vet just as surgery finishes. There is NO blockage. So what was this supposed blockage on the x-ray. It was apparently a lot of grass and the rice he had for breakfast. They found absolutely NOTHING!
I asked if he had been poisoned .. they say no because poison would have shown up as ulceration as it went down. They can only say that he must have either eaten something poisonous that day before (tuesday) or it may be viral. But his blood panel came back with nothing to suggest that. HOwever they did say that the blood panel does not necessarily show everything.
They did say that parts of his intestines were "over active". For those of you who are not sure, the intestine contracts and that's what forces the food along the right path. If it contracts too much and too hard then it will often come up the wrong way. It was the over active intestine that was causing the exorcist type projectile vomiting that he was doing on Wednesday morning.
So ... my baby boy was cut open. His stomach was cut open and the contents scooped out. Parts of his intestines were cut open because they wanted to make sure the "over active" parts didn't' have something weird like a shoe lace stuck in them. All for absolutely nothing.
I outright said to the vet.... "so my bulldog has been cut open for nothing, there was no blockage, you dont' know what caused it, and so there is no way of me stopping this from happening again"!!!
I am furious that they were so quick to get the scalpel out and put a bulldog under anaesthesia. This was not the normal doctor that Linus saw, it is a younger girl who works with my normal vet.
So LInus comes home and they knock $500 off the bill .. so we're at $1900. three types of meds. painkillers, anti-acid to stop the stomach acid destroying the stitches, and anti vomiting tablets. Also strict instructions to take his normal daily food allowance and split it into six regular meals. Those of you who have work fulltime .. you will appreciate how difficult that is to do. I am so far behind in my work right now because out of the two of us it is easier for me to slip home and feed him and give the meds then my husband. Being there to feed him every three hours requires special ops planning. Every night we stand in front of our little board on the fridge.. dry eraser pen in hand, and plan out how the hell we are going to get through the next day!!
I get home on Wednesday and just want to cry when I see him. My baby boy is so uncomfortable so I just curl up on the doggy bed in the laundry room with him and we both just lay there for a while with me not trying to cry.
Linus was always the Mummys boy, but since this he has become more so. We have to put him on the lead/leash to take him out so he has got used to it. But he prefers me to go with him rather than Tom and won't budge out of the sunroom unless I'm 2" away from him. It's got to the point where I dont' even need the lead because he wont' move unless I'm less than a foot away from him.
So we seem to be making improvements, and then I get home from work on Friday afternoon to find blood and poop all over the laundry room floor. We are talking poop mixed with blood and then just blood. So I call the vets .. they want him in immediately. So I leave the poopy laundry room .... and off we go. I see my usual vet this time. She examines him and says the stitches look ok. Basically, the incisions were done in the upper intestines so blood from there would be dark. This was bright red which would indicate it was coming from the colon. There were a number of options ... it could be the painkillers upsetting his system, or it could be whatever he ate that was poisonous had finally passed down to the colon and was irritating that.. hence the blood. So she gave me another medicine that was going to stop the bleeding and calm down the colon. Then she had the audacity to charge me it!!! My bully got cut open for NOTHING on the "advice/professional opinion" of the other vet. An unnecessary and invasive surgery, then she charges me $25 for yet more pills. I was fuming, and I just took the invoice and walked out. Still haven't paid it.
So as we stand right now ... I have a bully baby who is never more than 6" away from me whenever I am home. He is very clingy. His stitches this evening are still intact but they are obviously annoying him, he sometime walks around in circles as if he is trying to get to them but he can't. They also feel moist ... so I am thinking another call into the vet tomorrow is needed to find out if this moist seeping type thing is expected. It's the first time I"ve had a dog go through major internal surgery such as this.
of a week when all is said and done!!!Soooo............... I get home on tues night and all is fine, make dinner, and just as we sit down to eat, Linus throws up. Then he throws up again. And again. Then a bit more. Again. we eat dinner. Throws up again. Again. Once more. Again and finally again. Ten times. In between he's all happy and smiles for the most part. Tom is freaking out, and I'm trying to stay calm because he is perfectly normal apart from this sudden interest he has in playing the lead role in the exorcist. Now if his head had started spinning it would be a different story!!
So I stay up with him and at 2am he hasn't thrown up for a long time and seems very very sleepy so we all go to bed.
In the morning, he's perfectly fine. Hadn't thrown up at all during the night and by now 6 hours had passed.
So I cook up some white rice and a little beef ... and he has the bland diet for breakfast. Tom was off that day because we are getting quotes for a new garage door, so off I toddle to work. Then at 9am I get a call from Tom that Linus has thrown up three times since breakfast. Off to the vet he goes.
Now, for those of you who have missed my previous posts ... Linus is known to eat anything that is not nailed down and/or has not got a pulse. I thought I had seen an improvement in this behaviour but maybe not.
The vet immediately takes x-rays suspecting a blockage, and returns with them pointing out what they are confident is a blockage of some sort. So Linus ate something. The vet does mention enemas to see if the blockage will move, but is still pretty sure there is a blockage on the x-ray. I wasn't in the room, but for whatever reason Tom is convinced that surgery is immediately necessary. Total cost right now is $2400.
Many many hours pass, and I'm so impatient that I call and happen to catch the vet just as surgery finishes. There is NO blockage. So what was this supposed blockage on the x-ray. It was apparently a lot of grass and the rice he had for breakfast. They found absolutely NOTHING!
I asked if he had been poisoned .. they say no because poison would have shown up as ulceration as it went down. They can only say that he must have either eaten something poisonous that day before (tuesday) or it may be viral. But his blood panel came back with nothing to suggest that. HOwever they did say that the blood panel does not necessarily show everything.
They did say that parts of his intestines were "over active". For those of you who are not sure, the intestine contracts and that's what forces the food along the right path. If it contracts too much and too hard then it will often come up the wrong way. It was the over active intestine that was causing the exorcist type projectile vomiting that he was doing on Wednesday morning.
So ... my baby boy was cut open. His stomach was cut open and the contents scooped out. Parts of his intestines were cut open because they wanted to make sure the "over active" parts didn't' have something weird like a shoe lace stuck in them. All for absolutely nothing.
I outright said to the vet.... "so my bulldog has been cut open for nothing, there was no blockage, you dont' know what caused it, and so there is no way of me stopping this from happening again"!!!
I am furious that they were so quick to get the scalpel out and put a bulldog under anaesthesia. This was not the normal doctor that Linus saw, it is a younger girl who works with my normal vet.
So LInus comes home and they knock $500 off the bill .. so we're at $1900. three types of meds. painkillers, anti-acid to stop the stomach acid destroying the stitches, and anti vomiting tablets. Also strict instructions to take his normal daily food allowance and split it into six regular meals. Those of you who have work fulltime .. you will appreciate how difficult that is to do. I am so far behind in my work right now because out of the two of us it is easier for me to slip home and feed him and give the meds then my husband. Being there to feed him every three hours requires special ops planning. Every night we stand in front of our little board on the fridge.. dry eraser pen in hand, and plan out how the hell we are going to get through the next day!!
I get home on Wednesday and just want to cry when I see him. My baby boy is so uncomfortable so I just curl up on the doggy bed in the laundry room with him and we both just lay there for a while with me not trying to cry.
Linus was always the Mummys boy, but since this he has become more so. We have to put him on the lead/leash to take him out so he has got used to it. But he prefers me to go with him rather than Tom and won't budge out of the sunroom unless I'm 2" away from him. It's got to the point where I dont' even need the lead because he wont' move unless I'm less than a foot away from him.
So we seem to be making improvements, and then I get home from work on Friday afternoon to find blood and poop all over the laundry room floor. We are talking poop mixed with blood and then just blood. So I call the vets .. they want him in immediately. So I leave the poopy laundry room .... and off we go. I see my usual vet this time. She examines him and says the stitches look ok. Basically, the incisions were done in the upper intestines so blood from there would be dark. This was bright red which would indicate it was coming from the colon. There were a number of options ... it could be the painkillers upsetting his system, or it could be whatever he ate that was poisonous had finally passed down to the colon and was irritating that.. hence the blood. So she gave me another medicine that was going to stop the bleeding and calm down the colon. Then she had the audacity to charge me it!!! My bully got cut open for NOTHING on the "advice/professional opinion" of the other vet. An unnecessary and invasive surgery, then she charges me $25 for yet more pills. I was fuming, and I just took the invoice and walked out. Still haven't paid it.
So as we stand right now ... I have a bully baby who is never more than 6" away from me whenever I am home. He is very clingy. His stitches this evening are still intact but they are obviously annoying him, he sometime walks around in circles as if he is trying to get to them but he can't. They also feel moist ... so I am thinking another call into the vet tomorrow is needed to find out if this moist seeping type thing is expected. It's the first time I"ve had a dog go through major internal surgery such as this.
. Some people can be fooled by their tough looks, but they are such gentle souls and even more delicate on the outside.
