Monday, October 27, 2008

Update on Raven

Greg took Raven back to the vet on Friday. Our vet's office has about 8 vets working there and you never see the same one twice. So he sees a different one on Friday from the one I saw on Tuesday. He tells this vet that Raven isn't eating or drinking anything because she keeps throwing up and we think it is the medicine making her do it.

His response: "Well, quit giving her the medicine."

Greg: "The other vet told us to give it to her to get rid of the worms!"

The vet checks her for worms, says they are all gone and now we just need to get her to eat and drink. So he gives her a shot to stimulate her appetite and an oral medication (anti-wormer) as a precautionary measure. He sends home another dose of the oral de-worming medicine with instructions to give it to her later that evening.

Greg brings her home, drops her off with me and heads to work. About 20 mins later she starts throwing up...violently! This lasts for the next 4 hours until she finally falls asleep in exhaustion and sleeps for the next 6 hours. I kept checking to see if she was breathing.
When Greg got home and saw how pathetic she was and after dealing with her the rest of the evening and into Saturday morning he ran back up to the vet's office and said something was wrong with her because she was worse now than when he took her to the vet the day before. The vet's answer..."you'll need to hospitalize her and even then I can't guarantee she is going to make it."

The only problem with that is the cost - yes, I love animals but I am not willing to sacrifice my house payment to hospitalize this 10 week old puppy I have had for one week. My husband was heartbroken at the thought of having to put her down.

Later that afternoon he looked up (on the internet) the medication that the vet had given her by mouth. These are the symptoms....
  • nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramps, diarrhea, or a decreased appetite;

  • headache;

  • drowsiness or dizziness;

  • insomnia; or

  • a rash.

Hmmm, sound familiar? Hello!? Wonder where he got HIS Vet's license...Vets-R-Us?! Everything we were trying to eliminate he gave her a medicine that increased the problem! We had not given her anything by mouth since Friday morning because she couldn't keep it down anyway. Saturday afternoon, we started giving her 3 ml of Maalox followed by 3 ml of Goat's Milk. We continued that throughout the weekend.

She woke up this morning and started sniffing around my kitchen. I thought "hmmm, is she hungry by chance?" She hasn't eaten since last Saturday (over a week ago) unless we have shoved it in her mouth with a syringe so I wasn't sure if that's what she wanted or not. I put some food down and let me just tell ya....this was a beautiful sight this morning!!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Oh what wonderful news! I am so glad she seems to be getting better. Hopefully things with your vet get straightened out. She is a beautiful puppy. We had a chocolate lab shortly after we got married that passed away. I would love to get another one.