Hi everyone. It’s me, Olivia (and Missy). The day before Astro’s first birthday, he went for his neuter surgery. The vet sent him home with a cone and medicine and they said that everything went well with his procedure. But in the afternoon, Mommy noticed that he felt really, really cold. The next thing we knew, he went to lay down alone in the yard and she said she knew something was terribly wrong.
I had been playing with my friend, Brooklyn and Mommy started calling out to us for help. She had tried to get Astro to come into the house, but he collapsed. We knew we had to get him to the emergency vet right away, but the three of us couldn’t pick him up. Thankfully, some neighbors were walking by and came to help when we told them what happened. We had to roll Astro onto a blanket, and it took all five of us to get him into the car.
When we got him to Mason Dixon Animal Emergency Hospital, we were told that Astro’s body was in shock. They began life-saving measures immediately, but they were very open and honest with us, letting us know that they didn’t expect him to make it through the night. They couldn’t even detect his blood pressure when we arrived. It was the worst day ever!!
As it turns out, he had been bleeding internally due to an untied ligature from his neuter surgery. The ER vet said that he had four liters of blood in his abdomen, and they had to perform emergency surgery to try to stop the bleeding and save his life. The problem was, he wasn’t stable enough for surgery and he had lost so much blood already.
Mommy and I waited through the night while they worked on him. At around 2:30 in the morning, they came to tell us that Astro had made it through surgery, but he wasn’t out of the woods yet. We were allowed to say goodbye to him and then had to leave him there to rest and recover. It was so hard to leave him there, not knowing if we’d ever be able to see him again.
Early the next morning the vet called to say that Astro was awake and was doing better than she had expected. She said, “no news is good news” and that she would check back in the evening to give us an update. Sadly, we got a call within a few hours saying that Astro had taken a turn for the worst, and they were having trouble stopping his bleeding. We went to visit him that afternoon, and it was just heartbreaking. Every time he moved; blood would drip from his nose. He tried so hard to inch closer to us, but he was so weak. After multiple blood and plasma transfusions, the vet said they felt that there was nothing more they could do for him there, and they wanted to transport Astro to Friendship Animal Hospital in Washington, D.C. Friendship had medication that could help his blood to clot that wasn’t quickly available to Mason-Dixon.
So, on the following afternoon, we took Astro to D.C. He was so weak and thin and frail, and he was covered in blood. It was really, really awful, but the doctors at Friendship were wonderful, just like the doctors at Mason Dixon. They gave him more blood and plasma transfusions, but they didn’t help much. The new medicine didn’t help much either. You’ll never believe what happened next. One of the vets from Friendship said that sometimes plasma from a live donor makes a big difference, so she offered to bring in her own dog to be a donor for Astro!!! And guess what!? It helped! Finally! Our boy was on his way to getting better.
After a week of emergency care, we were finally able to bring Astro home. He needed constant care when he came home so Mommy took off work to be able to really focus on him. She and I spent all of our time trying to help him to get better. He was very thin and very wobbly when he first came home. And not to be gross, but his scrotum was as big as a cantaloupe and filled with blood. It seemed impossible that he could ever get better. But slowly and surely, the bleeding stopped and our big, baby boy started to get well. It took a few months until he started to gain weight and be able to go for walks and play, but he is finally all better.
We are so thankful to everyone who helped us save our boy! Our neighbors, my friend Brooklyn, and the doctors at Mason Dixon Animal Emergency Hospital and Friendship Animal Hospital. We know that it’s a miracle that we still have our big, beautiful boy and we are very, very grateful.
