Last week was stressful to say the least.
It started over a week ago on my drive home on friday evening after work, thats when the little girl that eventually became Bailey was hit by a car on highway 4.
What most of you didn't know is we were already dealing with a very critical situation that we were trying to develop a plan for. I picked up Halo, a medical case from CCC animal services on 3/12/24. The shelter had her since 2/29/24
Upon intake at the shelter there were a few very concerning notes:
1. She was chipped and owned
2. She had a very serious gash on the side of her body along with a puncture wound. She also had a wound on her cheek.
3. She had a hernia most likely from botched C-section after C-section.
Important information that was discovered was that Halo was stolen from her original "Greeder," about a year and a half ago. She was found on 2/29/24 in Hercules. Her chip was registered to her original greeder, who ultimately didnt want her back....."life circumstances changed.....blah, blah, blah. Instead of surrendering her knowing she had serious medical issues he continued to hold out till the 10th day, preventing the shelter from giving her the care that she desperately needed and preventing rescue groups from picking her up to start her care. Please tell me again why backyard breeders care about these animals......... Try it I will give you a hundred cases that I know this year alone that will show you its all about the money and ultimately they just dont care.
Well Ebarr picked her up on 3/12/24 and due to some confusion because the shelter is busting at the seams, and I had a hellacious scheduled: I missed for about 36 hours that her healing had taken a turn. Thank goodness , a very skilled foster offered to take her after I only had her thirty six hours. Right away the foster was on the phone telling me that the wound was getting worse and worse.
I lined up the very first that visit we could get, And a plan was made for her medical care. Our vet suspected that the wound was antibiotic resistant, And cautioned me that a things didn't change quickly surgery would be the only option. Some Tess were done and it was confirmed the bacteria in the wound was not responding to the antibiotics. What made things worse is even after a drain was getting worse and worse and worse. The treatment was not working. Gina and I spoke and due to the length of time she had been dealing with this, we decided to go ahead and plan the surgery.
We called Pacific Veterinary Emergency & Specialty Hospital. (The hospital that treated my Athena) we got her into a consult and scheduled the surgery.
Basically, they were going to have to go into the gash, clean it out the best they could, and see if they could find a foreign object in there, and cut the dead flesh away and stitch her back up. To save you the grossness, She was developing a massive amount of puss on an hourly basis due whatever was going on inside of that gash. Before the surgery the doctor called and warned me that this could be a tumor, I never considered that. The doctor warned me that we might find nothing and this absolutely could come back. The doctor asked again, if we would consider a CT Scan before the surgery, But we couldn't afford to do both the scan and surgery. We absolutely threw a Hail Mary and hoped for the best. STRESSED OUT, was an understatement.
This past Thursday she went to surgery. I received a text pretty quick stating that she was out of surgery and recovering and that the doctor would be calling me soon. It concerned me because it was so fast. I felt like an exploratory surgery would have taken longer. The Dr called me and told me that he had concerning but good news. He told me that they discovered that Halo had a 5.5 inch stick inside of her. The stick was not in her stomach.It was embedded in the side of her. I was dumbfounded. That is absolutely something I would have never thought I would have heard.
I immediately called gina and we combed through every record at the shelter and the records from All Bay Animal Hospital. I remembered the puncture wound. Most of you know my career is in child abuse and neglect, As i've stated before animals and children are similar. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what Halo had been through.
Halo is a lucky girl.
We want to thank our dedicated foster, Who can stomach a hell of a lot more than I can. Just her descriptions of what was going on was making me wanna throw up, and I wasn't even dealing with the situation directly.
Halo is at her foster home healing currently.
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