For those who have never played Dungeons and Dragons, one of the primary aspects of the game is that whenever a character is going to attempt something risky or challenging, they need to roll a dice to see if their roll exceeds the difficulty of the challenge. If you roll a 1, that is considered a critical miss - and bad things are about to happen.
Get your geek on
Kismet = Fate
On November 27, 2012, I was at the vet, sending my dog Hollywood over the rainbow bridge. As fate would have it, within the same hour as I let Holly go, a puppy was being born in another end of town.
I didn't really think I was ready for another dog ... but, seeing as both dogs were German Shepherds and the one was born within the same hour as the first had passed, I thought it was fate.
The Arabic word for fate is "Kismet"
at least, that's what I believe
So ... roughly 8 weeks later, when I picked up the little ball of energy, that's what I named her.
The first time Kismet had bloat
In November os 2020, Kismet started coughing violently, but nothing was coming up. She was trying to get comfortable, but she couldn't. I felt her abdomen and it felt like a balloon that was going to pop.
BLOAT. The stomach rolls over itself and cuts off the flow of blood and food. It also prevents digestive gases from escaping - making the stomach quickly fill up like a balloon.
Fortunately or unfortunately , my other dog had bloat about 8 years earlier. I knew the signs and knew how urgent it was to get her to the vet. It was after hours - so we needed to get to the emergency vet.
As I was breaking a couple land speed records, my wife was on the phone explaining that I was coming and that we believed it was bloat. There was a technician waiting when I arrived.
This issue wins the "triage lottery". So pretty much every other animal's procedures at the vet were shuffled so that she went right in to surgery.
In the surgery, they open up the abdomen, manually flip the stomach back to the position it is supposed to be in ... then, they can perform a Gastropexy to prevent this from happening again.
Similar to a kinked garden hose. Once the pipe has kinked once, it's mush easier for it to kink again.
Three days later, I was able to pick her up and bring her home.
After the Gastropexy surgery - it can't happen twice. Can it?
There is a very small chance that a dog that's had a Gastropexy could have it happen again. Basically, that means that where the vet stitched the stomach to the abdominal wall has broken free.
On September 9, just as my wife and I were getting ready for bed, I heard "the retch". It's a specific sound that I've heard twice before ... But, I didn't want to believe it. I took Kismet outside and made her walk around the backyard. With a flashlight, I was checking to see if she was able to get anything out of her stomach. Nothing. Feeling her belly, I could tell it was starting to swell.
SHIT
I loaded her in the car and asked my wife to call the emergency vet and tell them we were on our way.
On the phone, the vet had never had a patient in for a second case of bloat so they told my wife it was likely something else.
When I arrived and talked to the tech, they told me the same. I explained that I would be absolutely delighted to be wrong about this. Alas, it was bloat.
I arrived at the vet at 10:17PM. She was in surgery before 1:00AM. I got a call from the vet at 6AM that the surgery went well and she'd need to stay a day or two for observation.
I picked her up on the 12th. She was groggy, but otherwise looking well.
With any surgeries involving the gastro intestinal tract . The first thing you are looking for is .... poop!
A couple hours after she got home, we had poop.
So, the plan, now, was to keep her calm and let the healing occur.
You didn't think it would be that easy
She pooped on Sunday and Monday, but nothing on Tuesday. By Tuesday afternoon, she had stopped eating. I called the vet and they recommended I watch her for the day, and if things don't improve, bring her in on Wednesday.
Tuesday night, she vomitted. It was nasty smelling. It smelled like poop and bile. Wednesday morning, she did it again and it smelled just as bad.
I had her back at the vet at 11AM. The moment we got into the exam room, she released a torrent of vomit that made the previous two seem tiny. The vet was having a hard time not gagging with the smell. She called for someone to come clean up the room and we moved to the next available exam room.
She was taken to the back and had X-rays taken ... everything looked fine with her guts ... but her temperature was up and she was nauseated. They asked if they could keep her for the day to run some tests.
My regular vet is only open from 8AM until 8PM. So I transferred Kismet from there to the emergency vet (24 hour). After a number more tests, they discovered that she had gastritis (an infection). They put her on a buffet of drugs (antibiotics, antacids, pain killers, anti-nausient and something to keep the GI tract moving). Then kept her for 2 days.
When I picked her up on the 17th, she looked a lot better than when I transferred her. She slept for the whole ride home. Then went to sleep again.
Time to watch for poop again
By midday on the 18th, we had poop. She was eating well and was willing to take all of her 6 different types of pills throughout the day. Some of the pills couldn't be taken with food, others needed to be. I created a spreadsheet to keep track of which drug gets taken on which day.
Not quite done yet
On Tuesday the 21st, she started to get nauseous and didn't want to eat. We went back to the vet for a quick visit to get a new prescription of the anti-nausea drugs. But she wasn't having any of it. By now, she was even refusing to eat peanut butter (the best way to give her pills). It wasn't looking good.
Talking to the vet, she recommended something a little odd. She asked me to stop giving her any medications. From a clinical timeframe, Kismet had taken her medication long enough that the infection should be taken care of and there wouldn't be any pain any more. Perhaps it was time to let nature and time have a crack at healing.
It's really hard to watch a loved one who refuses to eat
Wednesday the 22 was a very, very long day. We tried everything we could to get her to eat. To no avail. She refused everything. She was drinking water, she didn't appear to be nauseated, she was sluggishly active, but she wasn't eating. This went on all day.
Thursday morning, we were fearing the worst. We also didn't want to treat our baby like a lab rat. We were pretty sure that the end was very near.
So much so, that we put together a "Rainbow Bridge Package". Kleenex for us, her favourite ball and a towel that smelled like her and her brother. If we were going to take her to the vet for that ... at least, she'd have us and a couple other mementos that would make her feel comfortable.
It's about time she stopped rolling those 1's
She hadn't eaten anything since Tuesday morning ... and it was now Thursday evening.
We had even tried buying McDonald's hamburgers as a treat - nothing.
My wife had an idea ... give Kismet's brother some cheese right next to her ... and she might eat some out of jealousy. She was right. Kismet didn't eat much, but she ended up eating about a quarter of a cheese string. (We guessed about 40 calories). It wasn't much, but it was a start.
I found a jar of puréed carrots in the cupboard. Kismet didn't want any of that. But, I smeared it on her muzzle and she then cleaned herself. This took a long time .. but eventually, she had eaten about half the jar of carrots (another 25 calories).
So, by the time we went to bed on Thursday, Kismet had consumed about 100 calories. Every little bit counts.
Friday morning, Kismet was willing to eat some cheese, some wet dog food, some steamed sweet potato, and the some special wet food for GI tract patients. Little by little, her appetite returned.
Saturday, we kept her meals small, but we gave her more meals. (6 small meals instead of 3 regular meals)
Sunday, we did the same. She's been cleaning her bowl with every meal.
We are cautiously optimistic that this ordeal is over.
It's up to Kismet now.
