Glad to hear Teddy is doing better!!! I’ve been thinking about all of you since I read your message board. It’s wonderful that the vet thinks he’s improved enough to go home. For us, we took Rudy home against the advice of our vet who highly recommended that Rudy stay in hospital for 7-10 days. It was a very heart-wrenching and scary decision but after much deliberation & heavy hearts, we realized we just couldn’t afford the hospital care & have enough for the ongoing long-term medical care as well.
Once we came to this conclusion, our vet understood how difficult it was for us & helped us in every way she could. We were given instructions like how to monitor his vital signs: heart rate & respirations (which were over 80/min for over one month) & signs/symptoms to watch for (without the testing equipment to check his oxygen levels, for example, we had to rely on our observations; & check the color of his gums, inside cheeks, & tongue to make sure it wasn’t completely grey or blue). She gave us her work schedule so we would know when to call in to & speak with her directly & she encouraged us to do so. If she was off for a couple of days, she would call us to ask us personally how he was doing. She also asked us to call in very morning with a daily update. There was this certain technician available at 7 a.m. who knew Rudy’s case and has 25 yrs experience. She gave us daily encouragement & concrete suggestions/advice on “Rudycare” (all of this at no extra cost).
We were also fortunate that I was able to take 2 weeks vacation on short notice & my husband, Paul, is retired. The care was around the clock; neighbors/friends were even bringing us food & dropping by to help where they could.
One of the most important keys to our survival (& I mean for all of us, not just Rudy) was this website and the wonderful people here. I know with absolute certainty that Rudy would not have made it without all the knowledgeable advice and incredible encouragement we got here!!!!! Everyone on this site (even those who posted their stories but who we didn’t connect with directly) gave us strength & confidence & we felt accepted no matter what decisions we made at any given time with our circumstances in mind. No matter what the outcome, even if we lost Rudy or decided he needed to be put down, we felt totally supported & that everyone on this site would understand completely. The support (emotional & technical) is still invaluable.
Just a few things that we learned that may be helpful to you:
- It did get worse before it got better (we almost lost Rudy four times in that first six weeks or so) - this website was a godsend to pull us all through
- the importance of keeping them hydrated- it took Rudy more energy that we realized for him just to breathe, his heart was very stressed as well (even though he barely moved, it was like he had ran a marathon- he was very dehydrated & lost 20 pounds & was so exhausted he wasn’t able to drink let alone eat for himself):
- we got many of the larger sizes of syringes from our vet & squirted little amounts of liquid up to1-3 syringes full into Rudy’s mouth either of water; Blue Gatorade; & vanilla Boosts Plus or ice chips every 20 minutes or so around the clock especially when he was at his worst & we were all awake anyway. Sometimes we put ice cubes in his bowl of water & this seemed to make him more interested to drink on his own.
- kept him cool: used a fan, slept in the cool basement with him, took him for car rides with the windows down so he could “catch his breath”.
- IV’s of saline (the vet noticed that even with all the hydration we were doing; it wasn’t enough to keep his organs hydrated). The tech did the first go to show us how to do it and then we took the prescription & the empty bad & line to a medical supply store (for humans) to purchase our supplies. It was less than $2/bag vs. $14 each from the vets & we reused the same line for the full two weeks since it was perfectly safe & saved us $40 a line. Rudy was much more comfortable after we started these sub-q’s twice/day (in hindsight, I think we should have started sooner but we didn’t know and were already overwhelmed).
- Force-feedings: since Rudy didn’t eat on his own for over six weeks, we fed him high-energy, high-calorie canned puppy food like Wellness Just for Puppy mixed w/ some whole grain pasta, rice, quinoe etc as often as we could & gave him Nutri-Cal Puppy (paste in a tube- easy to feed) & Boost Plus for extra calories. He also continued to offer him almost anything just to get him to eat. One time, he liked these liver treats so we fed him the whole bag. Then I’d buy six bags of it & he wouldn’t eat it. His tastes kept changing. For another two days, he’d only eat Kentucky Fried & then on to something else. At that stage, it was more important that he ate something & even now I give him the occasional Boost + & we still force-feed him in the a.m. if he doesn’t eat his regular food so that we can give him his Itranaconazole.
- Give Itranconazole with fat i.e. smothered in peanut butter. Plus we give him Milk Thistle twice/day which we buy at Costco (we heard it can help protect his liver from damage from the meds). We also give Rudy vitamins every day hoping it boost his immune system.
On a more personal note:
- We decided to concentrate our funds on the treatments vs. diagnostic testing. We asked our vet to only do the tests that were crucial in determining the plan of action for his care. Especially after the initial emergency blood works, x-rays etc, we focused our funds on his meds/check-ups/treatment mainly. It was obvious he was deathly sick (we didn’t need to pay extra & put him through more testing to find that out) plus part of me thought if we did find out his antigen level, for example, that it might influence/bias our decisions. (We did find out a couple of months after he was out of crisis that his antigen level had been in the 60’s after a few weeks of treatment. I think if we had known that at his worst that we may have decided to give up the battle but instead we now have a miracle dog!)
- There are advantages & disadvantages to whatever decision/plan of action is taken & we can’t judge the outcome as whether it was a good decision or not- we do our best & that’s all we can do. Once we made a decision to bring Rudy home, we tried to focus only on the positives of that decision- that Rudy would be more comfortable at home & that while we didn’t have the technology & expert medical care of the hospital environment, they were close at-hand. Besides, we loved & cared for Rudy more than anyone & that personal connection & care would go a long way. Even mini-visits, hugs & pets from friends & dog-friends alike (no more that 10 minutes) seemed to pick up his spirit a lot. Sometimes he’d would take a treat or eat for someone else.
- There is great power in prayer & love & everyone’s best wishes. The spirit is amazing & miracles do happen.
I really hope some of this will be useful to you. We are most definitely in our prayers & thoughts.
All the very best,
Sheila, Paul & Rudy
PS Keep us posted when you can.
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Topic: Teddy Day 3 (Read 1057 times)