The Adventures of Lilly the Mutt

May 06, 2011

The Adventures of Lilly the Mutt

I know that some of you know what has been going on with Miss Lilly, but the saga is finally (we hope) over and since Lilly is the greatest Mutt of all time I thought she deserved a blog post to celebrate how tough she is. For those that don't know, I will start at the beginning and go ahead and apologize for the long blog post. On Monday night at 1am, James and I and climbed into bed. Lilly was still in the living room and we heard her rustling around. James finally got her to come into the bedroom, and she was licking and swallowing a LOT. That's generally a dog about to throw up or trying to make itself throw up so we braced ourselves. One hour later it happened, she threw up a LOT and as James was cleaning some of it up he goes "Umm, there's velcro in here." Velcro? She had been licking my laptop case while trying to throw up (I know, weird) so we think she swallowed the piece of velcro that holds the laptop chord together. Anyhow, she seemed better so off to sleep we went. Over? Not even close.

Tuesday I came home from work a little later than normal around 8:30pm and started making myself dinner. It included rice, and since Lilly's belly had been a little upset I decided to give her some rice instead of dog food. We went to bed without incident. However, Tuesday morning around 9am I got out of the shower and noticed Lilly throwing up. Again. Weird. I cleaned it up and kept doing my things around the house. Between then and 11:30am she had thrown up about 5 times so we went to the vet. They explained they were going to give her some fluids, take an xray to make sure there was no obstruction, and they'd let me know. I went to work trying to keep busy. James has been on base all week for a petty officer indoc training so I'm a little worried about all this happening without him there. Or even where I can get to him because the base is locked down since Bin Laden was killed. I can't get on base. At 4pm they called to come pick her up. The xray had shown nothing in her stomach so I could take her home with special food. I was only allowed to give her a tablespoon with her medicine for that first meal. I did this at 7pm. At 9pm she threw up the food and the tablet which had not been digested at all which I thought was weird after 2 hours but I'm not a vet. She went right back to sleep and I thought everything was ok.

Oh my gosh was I wrong. We went to bed at 1am and at 3am she woke up throwing up and never stopped. Literally every hour on the hour she was throwing up massive amounts. James couldn't come home and I was a little weary of calling the vet emergency line. So Lilly and I made it through a night of hell. I waited until the vet opened yesterday at 8am and I called them and thus started maybe the worst day of my life. I took her in and she could not even lift her head. Few words get her as excited as "You want to go for a ride?" But she wouldn't get up off the bathroom floor. I finally got her there and wasn't given much comfort with how concerned everyone looked. I left her there hooked up to an IV and they had no idea what was wrong with her. I left crying not knowing what was going on and was told to call at noon for an update. So I went home after sitting with her for awhile and waited. At noon I called and was not given much hope. She hadn't stopped throwing up. They asked permission to do a barium swallow and blood work. The barium swallow is a more in depth xray to watch barium move through her stomach to see if it stops somewhere indicating something blocking it. The blood work was what really terrified me. They weren't sure if her kidneys were failing. If her kidneys had been failing there wouldn't have been much we could have done. I got off the phone literally in hysterics. I laid in bed and was devestated. James is gone a lot of the times and Lilly is my pal who goes with me almost everywhere, she's waiting for me everynight so I was having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact I could lose her. To make matters worse, James was unable to come home until Friday night. I just started praying and called James and I think we sat on the phone for an hour just saying "I can't believe this." Because up until Monday we had a 3 year old happy go lucky very quirky little Lilly Bear.

Well at 3pm I couldn't take it I actually drove over to the vet. If I was going to get bad news I didn't want it to be on the phone and I wanted to see her. Thank god all of her major organs were ok. Her kidney functions were actually strong and her heart and liver looked good. Literally the moment Dr. Levine said that I see Lilly coming down the hall and I lost it. She was still really weak but she saw me and her tail started wagging and she found the strength to put her two paws in my lap and lay her little head down. They did see an obstruction so surgery was going to need to happen. They didn't want to do it until this morning though, they wanted her to get some strength. I sat with her while they gave her some more fluids and was told to pick her up at 5pm. When I got there they had better news for me. She had actually pooped! Whoohoo! They said if she had anymore bowel movements surgery might not have to happen. So in the car to go home we went and I have never prayed so hard for that dog to poop. Or for poop in general for that matter. She was so lethargic and sleepy last night, she only got up when I made her to go outside for small walks. I wrapped up her in a blanket last night and we got in bed at 10:30pm and I had to check her 3 or 4 times because she never moved.

Well, when my alarm went off this morning to take her back to the vet, I was very surprised when Lilly completed her morning routine. She jumped out of bed, ran to her window in the living room to see if her squirrel was awake, then ran back and jumped in bed to see if I was up yet to take her out. I have never been so happy in my life. Until we went for our morning walk and she actually passed the obstruction!! It was over 2 feet (maybe 3) of string. A LOT of string. I took a picture and off to the vet we went. What were his words? "Will James be home tonight? Because if so you should tell him to take you somewhere nice for dinner. That poop just saved you about $3,000" We have avoided surgery for now! The vet did one more xray, there was still some barium in her system but since she passed the blob of string they were hoping that things would progress a little quicker now. So we were sent home with instructions for small meals every two hours. I will call the vet to update him every few hours. There's still a small possibility that she could have something stuck in her intestine now, but the vet felt pretty confident we were over the worst part of it. I really have not been this happy in a long time. I went from thinking I was going to lose her, to thinking she was going to be in surgery today, to now she's laying by my side looking out the balcony door. The fresh air seems to perk her up a bit so I have the balcony door open she's been going in and out. She had her first meal about 2 hours ago and so far so good!

From a military standpoint... I got through my first crisis without James. We always thought that we wouldn't have to deal with this until a deployment but there was no way to get to James this week. I felt so horrible for him not being able to see her and talk to the vet, but he was very strong for me (who was not so strong at times ha) and we made it through. We get to pick him up tonight and I am sure Miss Lilly will sleep right in the middle and get many belly rubs tonight.

Below are some pictures. Yes, there are pictures. Have you met me? The first ones were on my phone merely because I was using them to update James. There are some of her being pitiful, some of the string, and there's even some of her being her cute nugget self today. :) I really appreciate everyone that has called to check on her and me. She has quite a fan club. I also appreciate everyone that had to talk to me when I was a blubbering mess and talking like a crazy woman. I think Mom, Dad, and Annie got most of those so you guys are the best ;)

We hope everyone has a great weekend, it is sunny and 60 here in Highwood, IL! Next Tuesday it is supposed to get up to 76! YEEHAW! We love you all and thank you for your support always... :)

Jules, James, and Lilly Bear the Greatest Mutt That Ever Lived.