My 2 months old Japanese Spitz puppy that I bought a week ago is now in hospital fighting for his life. He is fighting against a deadly virus known as Parvovirus and it is up to the little guy now to fight this battle and hopefully win it.
We brought him back last Tuesday, Oscar was active, exploring the house everywhere, playing with us, biting everything etc. We were delighted with him even though he peed and pooed all over the place. Oscar breathed really heavily, like 100+ breaths per minute. I googled online and this seemed normal for puppies so I didn't think too much of it.
On Friday, we fed him his dinner at 7pm. According to my mum-in-law who fed him, he stopped eating rather abruptly and refused to go near his food.
On Saturday, we observed Oscar and he continued to refuse to eat. We were very concerned as the pet shop owner who sold him to us did mention that you know a dog is unwell when (1) they stopped eating and (2) they have diarrhea. Oscar had diarrhea so we brought him to the vet on Saturday afternoon. The vet did a blood test and the results were very alarming. His white blood count was way too high, red blood count was way too low, the vet also mentioned his ALT was very high, so the vet suspected something was wrong with his liver. The vet gave Oscar 6 different kinds of medicine and instructed us to force feed him. By evening he had no energy left and was just lying down and not moving much. I force fed him some food and the medicine but he threw everything up. By midnight we were really scared and decided to hospitalise him.
The vet saw the blood test results and voiced out a few of his suspicions. He told us they would do an ultrasound for Oscar when the radiographer comes in in the morning and inform us of the results. At about 9.30am on Sunday, I received a phonecall. The joy that it was not a liver shunt and was just a viral infection turned to dread when we found out how bad this virus was. It can be quite fatal for puppies as young as Oscar, because he hasn't been protected against it yet (he only had his 2nd jab, parvo vaccine is in the 3rd jab).
Parvovirus is a virus that attacks a puppy's intestines, effectively killing the intestinal cells. Eventually the puppy may die from dehydration as this virus causes vomiting and diarrhea in them. There doesn't seem to be any cure, treatment is merely supportive (hydrating the puppy, anti-diarrhea meds and anti-vomiting meds etc)
We bought Tamiflu for Oscar and brought it to the hospital as what they instructed. They informed us that Oscar was still having diarrhea and it is bloody diarrhea. We went back to the pet shop owner and she advised us to bring Oscar back to her, as we did mention to her we couldn't really afford the expensive hospitalisation fees (we hospitalised him for one day and it cost us $843). She refunded us the money and brought Oscar into her shop.
We asked her to update us on Oscar's status and she told us he didn't seem to be getting any better or worse. On Tuesday, she told us Oscar hasn't had diarrhea on both Monday & Tuesday, hasn't eaten at all and is generally just lying there. We were surprised and hopeful to learn that after the 4th day of his Parvo attack that Oscar is still alive. We decided to re-hospitalise Oscar despite the fees. We wanted to give it one last shot and save him if possible.
Today is Wednesday, I called up the hospital earlier, the vet said Oscar doesn't seem to be getting any better. In fact, his temperature is on the low side of normal. His electrolytes are really really low and he's not moving around, the phrase that the vet used was "He's really flat." His diarrhea came back although it's not as bloody as before but it's still watery. They force fed him but he seemed to have trouble swallowing. We asked the vet whether he thinks Oscar can survive today and the vet replied,"I really don't know", a far cry from when he told us that time that he felt Oscar had no problem surviving the first day.
We are praying for a miracle. The poor boy hasn't eaten much for the past 4 days, we just hope he can find it within him to beat the virus. I've prayed quite a bit for God to be merciful to us and to him, we really hope to bring him back with us and love him for the rest of his life. If you're reading this, I hope you can pray for him too. Thank you.
No comments:
Post a Comment