We lost a patient today. Was a small pup, that came in emaciated and was actually the reason I started the whole vet tech journey talk that I did on saturday....When he came in as a stray, a staff member -insisted- he smelled like "parvo", as a vet tech...I take all symptoms into consideration before just saying, wow, this smells bad....I took vitals, symptoms all into consideration and to me testing him for something was a waste of the shelters money...Just basing a diagnosis off of a smell is not good enough for me..... Anyway, my decision was ignored/not taken into consideration and while frustrated I went on about my day....tested the pup which came back negative (because even if he HAD parvo, he wouldn't have tested positive without symptoms starting anyway....)Well ends up the pup has a foreign body that probably had been there for quite some time before even coming into the shelter. He was very very skinny, not super hungry...but was still eating, drinking...not vomiting (Which is typically a tell tale sign of a foreign body) I got him to eat a stale dry treat on Saturday, He was alert, responsive....depressed, but the poor child was so skinny and de-hydrated. So we supported him with fluids, offered him super tasty food, gave him anti-nausea meds, etc....He was very nervous and not very trusting, but friday I spent my lunch time sharing my chicken with him, and he ate it off a fork, he was such a brave, sweet boy that just didn't know love i think. Yesterday we took more x-rays and it was hard to tell what was going on in his abdomen, we gave him barium, tried to get him to eat more chicken. He seemed to eat a small amount overnight.
When I got there this morning, he was bright and alert, greeted me at the door of the kennel. I took him out to go to the bathroom since he hadn't passed stool in the entire time he had been there. He wagged his tail this morning when I greeted him and he walked with me out to the grass yard. He went potty like the best boy and I gave him loves and scritches....he still didn't poop. We took another xray and could see that the barium had not gone through his digestive tract at all.....we immediately prepped him for surgery.
The foreign body was cloth in form, it was in his stomach, but had traveled into his intestine...bunching everything together, and making it all necrotic, he was rotting from the inside. The doctor removed as much as she could but my coworker that was watching the surgery said everytime she removed a section the next section would die, and it just kept going.....we gave him a wish and a prayer and hoped that as a young pup he would bounce back after all this pain and agony and we could nurse him back to health. Before he even woke up I offered to take him home and hospice care him with his IV catheter and Pump, and administer controlled drugs through out the night and In the case he starts to crash Euthanize him and put him out of his misery....
unfortunately he never made it that far....we had him on a CRI of pain meds, but he woke from surgery and just started crashing. He passed away, hopefully pain free. But it was a hard one, I wanted so bad for him to bounce back. I gave him so many hugs and loves and told him he was a good boy...and thats what I do for every patient I have.
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