Help Levi Burrowes Overcome Her Emergency Medical Challenges

Jessica Burrowes is organizing this fundraiser.

Donation protected

below are the updates that I did before I figured out how to do updates. Below is the update on Sunday after surgery. The updates that are current are shown in the updates section.

New Update:

Dr. K called and he was able to successfully complete Levi’s surgery!!! She is being woken up and so far so good.

Levi is fast, and just because she can’t get up and go does not mean this sweet baby can get down the hall faster then you can sneeze. Lol with that being said, Dr. K had to cut a piece of her intestine out because he found a compacted piece of hair with a little piece of plastic that got lodged in her intestine from her finding it and eating it. He tried to pulled it out but ultimately it got lodged so unfortunately he had to deal with the intestines like that. He was able to get her all back together and now we wait. Not sure where she got it but it’s one way to give mom a heart attack for sure.

Levi will be spending the night in the hospital to keep an eye on her and we will get to bring her home, IF she eats for them. If not, then my husband and my self will go and try to get her to eat for us. This is dad working on taking her meds yesterday before we knew what was really going on. I am so thankful we followed our gut and decided to not just wait to see if it would improve IF she got her meds. Levi was so sick that it could have ended differently if we would have waited.

keep the prayers coming because now she is going to be healing. Crossing my fingers we can bring my baby home tomorrow.

Update:

This morning we woke up to a phone call stating that Levi needed surgery right away. The problem was for them, it was Sunday and they did not have a specialist surgeon to perform it. In knowing the critical situation they went ahead and called many hospitals to find they were also in the same situation. One of the last calls was to Sumner veterinary hospital where Levi had been before for her physical therapy. The director knowing how critical Levi was informed them to have us bring her there. He was going to perform it for us. It was either him do it or we would have had to wait until Monday. Neither hospital wanted to take that chance so we jumped. We all knew she was tired and the light in her eyes was fading. They re did her tube and drained the new fluid, performed additional chest X-rays (she was having some new labored breathing) along with additional stomach X-rays and found that she had an obstruction and also aspirated pneumonia. This was knew so we got lucky because changes were happening fast, hence the ICU type of situation for critical care.

When I left her there last night or 3am, I told her she had a village fighting for her, I needed her to keep fighting and promised we would get her better. This little girl has been a fighter all her life. She has had so much zest and brought light to everyone. So of course, when she grew weak, she would have a teams of people that loved her to help hold her up. We all love her tremendously.

When we got there this morning, I lost it!! She was so happy to see us her little pitter patter feet started going. At that moment, I finally saw the fight come back to her. Mom was a complete mess that I was afraid we were loosing her, I was loosing my baby that I vowed to give her everything. We scooped her up and got her to Sumner.

The director came in and we went over the details. They will be doing surgery and repairing her. They will also be potentially putting her into the oxygen chamber to help with her pneumonia. Not sure how all that works but hey… she is where she needs to be. They were not sure when he would start surgery (it was a last minute thing he was clearing his schedule for) so it could take a minute. But he was going to call us if anything came up during surgery and of course after they woke her up.

This was her right before we left her for surgery. The light in her eyes and her spirit is stronger. Thank you everyone from the very depths of my soul. You are helping to bring our baby back. My husband wore this shirt specifically and told her that he was fighting for his peanut. Mady and Brooke are excited that she is going to be able to come home. We didn’t know yesterday, if that was going to happen. But seeing this little face, we have faith that she is going to make it. More updates when I hear. Now we wait… anxiously…

Original:

Levi started life by being thrown from a moving car at 6 weeks old sustaining injuries that no one knew yet, just how much her life was about to be changed for ever. She was found by a good samaritan and brought in to get help. Westside German Shepherd Rescue did what they always do and decided to take this sweet baby and give her a fighting chance. Levi received medical care, Physical therapy and Water therapy. After several months, it was determined that her fait was to be a wheel chair to get around. She had no use of her back legs and could only scoot on her belly. Levi needed constant monitoring because she also needed her bladder expressed in order to not get UTI’s. Her body was in such distress. She was taken care of by a wonderful foster mom, that made sure Levi started to have somewhat of a normal life, as much as she could, while taking her to her appointments. The rescue was not a place for this baby.

The Burrowes family of 4 fell madly in love with Levi from the second we laid eyes on her. I as her momma could not live another day without bringing her home. I was determined to give her what ever she needed, to live the best life she could, because life was forever changed for her, when she was thrown from that car, and when she became bound to her wheel chair. We didn’t care, we wanted her, we needed to bring her home!!

We didn’t want to put her on a plane with how her body was, so we flew to California and rented a large SUV to bring her home. On October 21st we started our journey back home to Washington state. We left Westside German shepherd rescue where she was fostered and she began life with a family that adored her before she knew us.

Levi has been such a trooper, with everything. She has been through PT and medical testing/treatment (MRI and Ct scans) along with her normal veterinarian and specialists, all sorts of things to address her medical needs (spinal cord injury from being thrown). She has been our perfect little girl, with all her feistiness and love for life, despite her disability. We are her family that loves and adores her and want to give her the best possible life and chance to be the “normal” pup that we know she is.

She has a fur sister who is an Alumi from Westside, a fur brother who is a rescue that needed a stable family and a cat sister who… well is old and she just wants to be left alone.

Levi has only been with us 8 months and something very unexpected happened yesterday June 6th. She began throwing up and her belly was very swollen and I could hear sloshing anytime she moved. She became 100% a different girl from her happy, loving self to a baby in pain that wouldn’t let her mamma or any of us come near her, to touch or love on her like she did all this time. She would not eat any thing and was only wanting water, which would make her throw up.

I rushed her to her normal veterinary (Firgrove Veterinary hospital) and we began to test and found that her stomach was holding onto water and part of it was being pushed up to where it was not easily releasing bile. Her stomach was pushing on other organs and making her throw up among other things that contribute to her being in pain. It was found that she has disks in her back that are getting worse making her pain in her already damaged hips and legs increased. We took her home after her going through X-rays, ultrasounds, having a tube put in her to drain the fluid and multiple pokes for sedation and a hand full of additional medications to try to help reduce her fluids and decrease pain and discomfort. Consequently, due to her upset stomach Levi was not able to take her meds nor did she want to eat anything that we tried to give her. We stayed up through the night making sure she was ok.

Today, (Saturday) was worse. The fluid that was taken out had returned and she still was not able to eat. Drinking water was all she wanted to do while being monitored in doing so. She was going in and out of what looked like consciousness. Dad was able to get two meds into her with a little bit of trickery, with water but nothing else. She still would not eat to take the rest of her needed meds, despite having some tricks given to us on different foods to try. That’s when I made the decision to take her back to our emergency veterinary hospital (Summit Veterinary Referral Center.) All four of us have been devastated because all we want is have our girl happy and healthy. I was not going to wait for Monday to come around so that she could go back to her normal clinic.

I sit here today, doing something I do not normally do, is ask for help. Given the circumstances of this happening, all within a two day time span and her going from a normal happy girl while playing and being bright to being incredibly sick, biting and showing aggression from pain, not moving at all or wanting to, and us not knowing what events will take place in the next hour, has devastated my self, my husband and our two beautiful girls. We love Levi to the end of time. I am humbly asking for your help. Levi needs your help.

If you can help with any thing, we would be eternally grateful and thankful. We are trying to give Levi a solid fighting chance to continue to have the life she so deserves. We do not know yet what our balance will be but we are trying to do everything we can and let her team try to help her. She has so much more of a life to experience while still getting help that she needs. This little girl has so much zest for life. Levi is funny and feisty and loves to snuggle during our morning bath time routine and loves to get crazy with her brother. She wants to live. Please help in any way you can. Nothing is too small.