Hope this okay here as I'd rather not mar my dog's memorial post with this, but if there is a more appropriate section please let me know.
On Friday, four days ago, I lost my beautiful girl Solstice to mesenteric torsion. I'd heard of bloat/GDV of course, but never this until it took my girl and of course now I'm reading all I can about it though that may not be the best idea right now as I sort through the grief. I've read so much about the high fatality rate, but it seems the more I read the more I come across dogs who have survived. I keep wavering between accepting that there was nothing to do, and second-guessing that we still could have saved her.
In short: we were out of town at an agility trial. Solstice was happy and normal in the morning, in the hours and days before we hadn't done anything unusual, nothing unusual happened at the trial. Sometime between 1-1:30pm was when she first started displaying symptoms, which began with "normal" vomit and diarrhea (happens to every dog now and then, right?). Cutting to the chase, over time she got worse and we arrived at a vet clinic just before 3:30pm. They did xrays, said something was wrong with her small intestine, top theories were foreign body or volvulus but couldn't tell for sure what it was without opening her up. They could do it, but wouldn't be equipped for any after care or complications and really recommended we get to a larger university hospital 1.5 hours away. This is what I keep questioning. We were in a small-ish town in a large state with long distances between vets. If we'd been home we'd have been a lot closer to more vets.
In a foggy haze and with my dog getting worse, we went to the hospital. Arrived there around 5:30pm, around 6:30 they had her in surgery. 8pm the surgeon came out to say her entire intestine was dead, there was nothing to do.
This dog was my everything, she was so special to me, and it destroys me to think I may have made the wrong decision by taking all that extra time leaving the first vet. With what I know now I would have insisted they try. If they suspected volvulus I question why they sent me away when they should have known how serious that was.
I wish I would have called a friend to help me think through the decision instead of going it alone but I was just so hazy by what was happening to my dog, I didn't think of it at the time. I keep telling myself that it was already too late anyway, because my dog is still gone and nothing can be changed about it. Sometimes I believe it but sometimes I doubt, especially with the stories I keep finding of dogs that survive this despite the high mortality rate.
I don't know if I'm looking for reassurance here or what. Just had to put our story out there now that my special dog is another sad statistic of mesenteric torsion.
On Friday, four days ago, I lost my beautiful girl Solstice to mesenteric torsion. I'd heard of bloat/GDV of course, but never this until it took my girl and of course now I'm reading all I can about it though that may not be the best idea right now as I sort through the grief. I've read so much about the high fatality rate, but it seems the more I read the more I come across dogs who have survived. I keep wavering between accepting that there was nothing to do, and second-guessing that we still could have saved her.
In short: we were out of town at an agility trial. Solstice was happy and normal in the morning, in the hours and days before we hadn't done anything unusual, nothing unusual happened at the trial. Sometime between 1-1:30pm was when she first started displaying symptoms, which began with "normal" vomit and diarrhea (happens to every dog now and then, right?). Cutting to the chase, over time she got worse and we arrived at a vet clinic just before 3:30pm. They did xrays, said something was wrong with her small intestine, top theories were foreign body or volvulus but couldn't tell for sure what it was without opening her up. They could do it, but wouldn't be equipped for any after care or complications and really recommended we get to a larger university hospital 1.5 hours away. This is what I keep questioning. We were in a small-ish town in a large state with long distances between vets. If we'd been home we'd have been a lot closer to more vets.
In a foggy haze and with my dog getting worse, we went to the hospital. Arrived there around 5:30pm, around 6:30 they had her in surgery. 8pm the surgeon came out to say her entire intestine was dead, there was nothing to do.
This dog was my everything, she was so special to me, and it destroys me to think I may have made the wrong decision by taking all that extra time leaving the first vet. With what I know now I would have insisted they try. If they suspected volvulus I question why they sent me away when they should have known how serious that was.
I wish I would have called a friend to help me think through the decision instead of going it alone but I was just so hazy by what was happening to my dog, I didn't think of it at the time. I keep telling myself that it was already too late anyway, because my dog is still gone and nothing can be changed about it. Sometimes I believe it but sometimes I doubt, especially with the stories I keep finding of dogs that survive this despite the high mortality rate.
I don't know if I'm looking for reassurance here or what. Just had to put our story out there now that my special dog is another sad statistic of mesenteric torsion.