Louie's rough couple weeks

Well, it had to happen. Louie is getting up there in years, and his breath has been getting progressively worse lately, so it was time for a dental cleaning. What really got my butt in gear was what looked like an abscessed canine tooth. Well, my clinic is emergency only, so it doesn't have dental x-rays, nor do we have a drill for removing teeth, so I had to get help from a local clinic in the area.

First things first - we got his vaccines up to date and had an exam at the clinic. Guess what his vet mommie hadn't heard? LOUIE HAS A HEART MURMUR...a small one, but it was there nonetheless. The vet and I discussed getting some x-rays of his chest - so I did. However, I did one better. I got him in to see Jack and my friend Katie, who just happens to be a Veterinary Cardiologist. She did an ultrasound of his heart and assured me that everything is just fine - just a mild flow murmur. Whew!! Here's a picture of her (about 7 months pregnant ;) with Louie just after the good news.

So, it was time to put him under anesthesia and get this dental thing done. Now, should be no big deal, right? However, I AM a vet and I DO overthink EVERYTHING, (I think knowing the risks is worse than having no idea) so I'm worried sick about my baby going under anesthesia.

In the end, his dental cleaning went well and he had three teeth extracted - two incisors in front bottom and one very back molar. His canine tooth turned out to be fine. He woke up from anesthesia just fine.

HOWEVER, he started bleeding from that back molar space around 8pm that night. I thought it had slowed down by the time we went to bed, so I hoped it would just clot and stop on its own. We laid him down on something to catch the few drips we thought we coming...here's a pic of that. Sorry Kirk.

Oh, was I wrong about the bleeding slowing down! We woke up at 3:30am to Louie vomiting a huge pile of blood on the bedroom floor. OMG! The bleeding hadn't slowed at all, he was just swallowing it! So, we got up and made a run to Walgreen's for cleaning supplies. WOW - Oxyclean really works! You would never know a murder scene took place in our bedroom. I took him outside and he vomited another huge pile on the stairs to the apt building. No pics of the vomit - although Jack wanted to! - sorry all.

Poor Lou :( The dripping never stopped and continued in to the next morning.

So I had to take him in to MY clinic Wednesday morning and RE-anesthetize him - which did NOT go as smoothly as it did the day before. Louie is not a good anesthetic patient, let me just say and there is a reason doctors are not allowed to practice on their own family. I should not have been the one anesthetizing him. A colleague of mine took over shortly after the first time I was unsuccessful in getting him down. In all, he tried to wake up TWICE during the procedure. There were times when I was freakin' out, BIG TIME, like almost crying. He regurgitated a bunch of blood from his stomach and he ended up with some blood in his tracheal tube - meaning he got blood in his lungs during the procedure. Hopefully it will resorb and not be a problem, but inhaling anything during anesthesia is the reason docs don't allow you to eat anything for 12 hours before. It can cause aspiration pneumonia, which is bad and takes a long time to clear up, and can be fatal. So I'm putting him on an additional antibiotic and watching/waiting/hoping he is fine.

It turned out the bleeding was coming from a small artery on the side of the opening. I couldn't quite grab it, but packed it with gel foam and another clotting type packing before re-suturing it.

No bleeding since. And Louie is happy to be home, albeit probaby pretty sore from the whole thing. He kinda whines while he's laying there now which, as you can imagine, is the most pathetic thing in the world :( Our poor Lou, he went through so much and I'm just so relieved and thankful he is okay. We just had to tell everyone about it. It was obviously a huge big deal to us and we thought everyone would want to know that Lou's a little down now - but at least he's recovering and safe at home!