Vet Trips Aren't Fun (And Neither is Surgery)

I've been quiet on the blog lately. This past ten days has been sort of a waking nightmare for our little family. You've probably heard me mention that our dogs are our kids and the way we dote on them, they really might as well be! Right  now, I can only imagine how horrible sickness is for a regular mama. If I'm this stressed out about my dog, my fear for my own offspring would be off the charts!

Dexter is a 6 year old blue rat terrier and he's my very first dog. When Walker and I got married, we decided once we got a house with a yard, we would get a dog. So we did. On the day we moved in, I brought home a tiny puppy the size of a potato.

He turned out to be incredibly smart, potty trained completely in ten days, perfectly obedient during training courses and a little ball of cuddly love. He still follows me everywhere and wants to be on my lap when at all possible.

I never knew I could love anything so much! Growing up we had no pets because my mom hated dogs and my dad was allergic to cats. But I've always loved animals so I was ridiculously happy when Walker said we needed a dog.

After we got Dexter, we discovered that he has luxating patellas- trick knees- and we had surgery to fix that when he was a year old. He also has a strange ear thing going on where his ears flop backwards. Not forwards, not straight up but backwards. I've never seen anything like it and neither has any vet we've visited.

He also has an undiagnosed follicular dysplasia of some kind that is called Canine Pattern Baldness. That's because he is a "blue" dog which are apparently prone to issues, at least among rat terriers. So he has a bald spot on top of his head, no hair on the back of his ears and very little hair on his underside. The rest of him has normal hair.

We've always affectionately called him our "broken" dog or our "recessive" boy (blue is a recessive gene). We've joked that if anything were to go wrong with a dog, it would be Dexter that got it. He's just so... prone.

He's been sick for a week now. His bloodwork is a mysterious conglomeration of super high nucleated red blood cells. His WBC is super low but band cells super high. But other things are totally normal. Nothing is adding up to any kind of diagnosis. His xray shows no blockage but he won't eat. He refuses to drink (we've done subcutaneous fluids 3 times now). He's on antibiotics just in case. He's lethargic, restless, shaking with pain. But he is eliminating just fine (well, when I can get him to eat).
I just got new bloodwork done and the numbers have completely flip flopped. I'm at my wits end.

We are now going in to get an ultrasound. We've been on a process-of-elimination journey with his symptoms and tests. The vet is now thinking inflammation of an organ in the gut, possibly, or internal bleeding because he has a lot of pain when his abdomen is palpitated.

At this point, I don't think there's a good answer for anything. Before, I was thinking "I hope the antibiotics work." Then I thought "I hope fluids work." After that it became "I hope he has kidney stones" then "I hope it's just an obstruction." It's getting to the point where I'm now just hoping it can be fixed with surgery. My solutions are getting progressively worse and now it's becoming a horrifying mix of "If it's cancer, I hope it's benign" and "If it's a tumor, I hope they can cut it out."

I am one nerve wracked, stressed out human. And that's why the blog has been a little quiet.

Update: After I started writing this, the situation progressed pretty quickly. He went in for surgery today at 11am. The ultrasound showed so much inflammation in his organs that they thought it must be a foreign body. However, once they got in, they didn't find anything and there were no perforations. But, from his stomach to his bowel, everything was inflamed. He also had abdominal adhesions. My vet removed those and washed out his cavity and his organs. Everything is now clean, clean, clean! Causes? Who knows. Several biopsies were done and we are waiting for more info.

Right now he's at an emergency clinic receiving monitoring and IV fluids, pain meds and antibiotics. It's ridiculously expensive but he's worth it. My sweet boy.

So, he's doing well after all that and at least with all those pain meds, he's feeling better. Poor thing. I can't wait till he is back home and happy. He will have two weeks of convalescing in his crate with only short potty breaks. That's so hard but it's a lot better than watching him curled up in pain.

There's things I would have done differently if I'd known better. I would have got xrays earlier, scheduled the ultrasound sooner, etc. Maybe I could have saved him some days of pain. It's a little hard not to beat myself up a little because I waited longer than I should have thinking it would resolve itself.

All the girls at the vet clinic love Dexter. He is a ladies' man, that is for sure. He's just so precious and loving even when he's sick. When we came in after his surgery to pick him up and take him to the emergency vet for monitoring, they all came out to say goodbye to him. I told them he is a person, he has so much personality and they all agreed.

At the emergency clinic, when they asked me what breed he was, I said "People. He's basically people. He's mama's little man."

tl;dr
I love Dexter. He got very sick and experienced horrendous pain. He had surgery today. They found abdominal adhesions which were removed. His innards were extremly inflamed and he is being treated to fix that. Hopefully. Dexter is people. I love him to bits.