by tenor » Sun Mar 10, 2024 5:53 am
[draft from yesterday, mar 8 2024. thoughts unfinished. got a few distractions. just seeking help with someone who has experienced something like this]
its been a really rough past two weeks. i could use some grieving advice or tips on losing a dog.
her name is penny. on the 26th, we adopted her from an animal shelter. she had been spayed on the 25th, but she clearly hadnt been cleaned before the spay, so her incision got infected, and we brought penny to our vet on the 29th. they sent her home with pain meds and antibiotics. she lasted fine through the weekend and everything looked great until tuesday. when we got home from work, she had a bleeding cyst/hole on her right front paw. we didnt think too much of it, we just thought it was a cyst, so we wrapped it. she broke through the wrap wednesday while we were at work, for 4 hours, and messed with the sore. when we got home, it had turned into two holes that bled with pressure. at this point, her hind legs were a bit shaky. thursday morning, her hind legs were severely swollen, and her sores on her front leg were not getting better. we took her to the vet again. they did a blood test and her white blood cell count was extremely high. she was fighting a bacterial infection. they sent us home with antibiotics, stronger, and told us that if at any point she refused to put weight down on any of her legs, we needed to bring her straight to an ER because it could mean the infection was septic and could have spread to her bones. we prayed and prayed and prayed thursday night that she would heal up with the larger dose of antibiotics. but this morning, friday morning, we woke up at 7am to feed her her medicine and she could not put weight on her back legs. we carried her outside and let her pee and poo, but her back left leg was held up the entire time. she was such a trooper. but we brought her to the ER. from there, it all went downhill. they had no answers. it was all just a guessing game whether or not our penny had gotten her infection from an outside source or from the spay being unclean. she had gone septic. her chance of survival was slim to none, and required very painful tests and monitoring all alone in the hospital for multiple weeks. we know she was abused in her previous home, for the first 4 years of her life. we gave her 2 amazing last weeks. we brought her out, she met and loved so many new people, and so many people fell in love with her and spoiled her to her heart's content. we had to let her go today, after 4+ hours in the hospital waiting and sobbing, and praying.