Dec
27
Here's Ellie the day before we left (Dec. 19) as I was trying to take Christmas cheer photos. Not very cheery. She threw up a minute later. I thought she had gotten a bad batch of chicken.
As it turned out, things weren't that simple. By Christmas Eve she was really sick, and on Christmas morning our amazing friend and dog/house-sitter Jackson took her into the vet (no easy feat). She spent Christmas on an IV and antibiotics with a fever of 104 F. Since all the labs were closed, the vet had to wait until Dec. 26 to do an X-ray and blood analysis.
Sweet Rachael Powell went to visit Ellie at the vet and only got one tail wag, a serious mark of sickness since Rachael is the only person Ellie has ever jumped up on (LOVES her). Although I was somewhat of a wreck down here in Uruguay, having Rachael involved gave me a huge amount of peace, both because she could give Ellie a little love and because her nursing background means she could explain to me a little better what the heck was going on.
After two X-rays (the first was sub-par) and blood work, they determined that she had an intestinal twisting or blockage or something and went in for surgery. There was a chance that the problem would have spread too far, and we had to make the call to put her down if that was the case. Yuck.
Four hours later we got the news that she made it out just fine! The vet found a mango pit in Ellie's intestine, which had caused some lesions and bleeding as well. She feels confident that the problem is taken care of, and now we're just waiting for Ellie to heal up. I expect she will do that quickly. She's tough.
What a day (or two, really).
Wow, Hannah, it appears you're not the only one in the family who loves Mangos!
Seriously, though, I'm glad all is fine... we recently had an issue with our cat (Jack) and so we've been nursing him back to health with lots of drugs- but we didn't know if it would be able to happen and thought we might lose him so we know what it's like...! They become members of the family in one sense!