So I get a text message at 7.20 this morning from my mom: “Dog’s sick again. Can you please take her to the vet?” Bea suffered an intestinal infection about a month ago; vomiting, diarrhea, lack of energy, wouldn’t drink. She got fluids, subcutaneous injections of pain medication and medicine for preventing vomiting, and a course of antibiotics. She quickly got over the infection. I get over to the house and mom meets me at the door. “It’s almost the same as last time, but not quite. She’s vomiting, but there’s no diarrhea. And this time she’s drinking normally. I don’t know what to make of this. She was wormed yesterday; do you think doing that so close to finishing the antibiotics messed her system up somehow?”
I walk into the upstairs room where the dog sleeps and immediately I notice that things are most definitely not the same as last time. Bea is lying curled up in her bed, shivering. Her tails wags a little when I call her name, but she makes no attempt to get up and greet me. This from the dog who is at the front door like a flash if someone’s coming in. I try to get her to stand up, and she does so with obvious difficulty. Now her tail’s wagging, and she takes a long drink from her bowl upstairs, so I’m not too concerned, but when I call her to follow me downstairs so we can go to the vet, she comes down the stairs one paw at a time, slowly, pausing at each step. I have to lift her into the car because she can’t manage the jump; she whines a little when I touch her stomach. Now I’m getting a bit more worried. Has the infection returned?
We get to the vet’s office and the vet takes Bea’s temperature. 40 degrees Celsius. Damn, that’s high. Blood tests are taken and Bea gets subcutaneous fluids again while the vets are analyzing the results. She’s trembling the whole time and can’t seem to stay in one place. She doesn’t want to sit or lie down; instead, she stands slightly crouched with her head down and paces from one foot to the other with her tail between her legs. I try to keep her as calm as I can, but she hardly reacts to my scratching or petting.
Then the vet returns with Bea’s blood test results. There seems to be nothing wrong with her liver or intestines, but her inflammation level is very high. In addition, even cursory examination shows that Bea is in great pain. Judging by this, her other outward symptoms, and the fact that she’s a Schnauzer (this breed, it seems, is more prone to the condition), the vet pronounces a diagnosis of pancreatitis and orders a heavy pain medication injection, antibiotic injections, and anti-vomiting injections. In addition, Bea gets a 10-day course of antibiotics, more pain killer injections to be applied at home, and strict instructions to absolutely not feed her anything until Friday. The enzymes in her pancreas, which normally would activate after leaving the pancreas, have for some reason activated while still in the pancreas, and have eaten away at it. Therefore, anything coming in through her mouth would stimulate those enzymes even more.
So, no feeding her until Friday. Then small amounts of high-carbohydrate, low-protein, low-fat food, increasing gradually to normal. Also, we have to feed her raw pig pancreas when she actually starts to eat, to give her the enzymes orally so her own pancreas doesn’t have to start working so hard so soon again. And we have to keep an extremely close watch on her until everything is back to normal, because this thing could be fatal.
I’m going back to my parents’ house this evening to administer the first pain killer injection. I really hope Bea’s condition has improved by the time I get there. It was really wrecking to watch her hunched over, rocking back and forth, completely in her own pain-filled world, whining softly on the floor of the examination room. It’s a horrible feeling when you can’t do anything about the pain.
I think it says something about the nature of this dog that she still didn’t snap at the vets or complain in any way, even with all the discomfort she was in. Not when they tested her temperature, not when they prodded at the painful spots in her abdomen, not when they stuck needles into her, not even when they administered the pain medication, which goes into the muscle. She licked the vet’s hand when she was drawing blood from her front paw.
Man, I hope she’s okay.
(He appreciates not having to cook for himself or go down to the store to buy ready-made meals.) However, some foods you can’t really give away as a one-person meal; what’s at the bottom of a pot of macaroni casserole isn’t really appetizing for humans, but mixed in with kibble in small amounts (about 2-3 tablespoons) works fine for Bea. We won’t be doing that in the future, though; from now on, it’ll be special diet only.