My wife and I have been having a very rough two weeks now with at least two rough ones ahead.
On October 30th, our 5 year old amstaff Cara (she has food allergies) projectile vomited everything she ate late in the evening. 1st and 2nd of November are holidays in Slovenia, so suspecting food allergies we took her to my wife's former classmate from the veterinary school who works as a veterinarian (my wife does not).
She got meds to stop her feeling sick and infusion liquid that we could also use at home for as long a the dog needed to overcome this reaction. By the wee hours of November 3rd her condition only worsened and we decided to head back to the city where the biggest clinic is and where we could find surgeons if anything serious was wrong.
Ultrasound showed some mild bowel obstruction and we decided to give her some laxative meds for the obstruction to pass. The obstruction went away, but her condition kept on worsening and by Saturday evening only the on-call surgeon would be available. Emergency surgery was performed and 2 inches of her small intestines were removed. She somehow swallowed a whole peach pit and it could have been inside her for weeks slowly destroying the intestines.
We got to see her on Sunday and my wife's first reaction was "this is some very very sloppy stitching on her lower abdomen". We got to take her home on Monday in the afternoon, because the stress of being in the hospice was hindering her progress. From then on up to today her progress was hit an miss and we were back at the vets each day. Yesterday, she looked very good all things considered, but had a sleepless night feeling nauseous and drooling.
We were complaining about the stitching the whole week trying to point out that such a sloppy job on the inside would be disastrous. We were med with only alternative explanations and test upon test day after day.
Today, the whole story unravelled. Lab results showed that the inside stitches probably gave way and that a repeat surgery is needed or else she dies (they tried to postpone even that). When the best surgeon in the clinic was done with her, another 13 inches of her intestines had to be removed and the previous job was deemed a disaster (reading between the lines). She has woken up from the surgery and she has a very hard recovery ahead of her. Dying is a possibility still.
We are going to demand a refund or sue them, because the first surgery was performed by the on-call veterinarian and not the on-call surgeon. Our stress level are though the roof and will continue to be for some time now. Luckily we were both able to have very dynamic work schedules this week, but I don't think next two weeks will be so easy in this regard.
Dogs are like family and it fucking sucks when they are sick.