Critical Care Unit

I just brought Banjo home from the Critical Care Unit at Angel Animal hospital, where he spent 32 hours and $1,200. He ate something nasty, feces to be exact, while I was walking him off leash. I was traumatized by the experience, and he was too. He got a belly full of foreign bacteria that sent him down a path of continuous vomiting (12 hours worth), lethargy, and ultimately dementia - where he wouldn't sleep, but instead would sit up and nod off, clearly exhausted; then when he was awake, he would sit and stare at blank walls. This is the point that I started sobbing, he looked like a 17 year old dog in a 1 year old body. He wouldn't respond to his name or any of the dozens of things that usually trigger his active, full on, rear-end wagging (not just the tail wagging, but his entire rear end!). He was clearly dehydrated, but we couldn't get him to eat or drink anything and his increasing decline forced us to take him to the ER.

I was concerned that the feces had drugs, parasites, or viruses, in it (both dangerous to him and to us for cleaning up his vomit), but the veterinarian was only concerned that he had eaten other foreign objects or that his pancreas or other organs could be damaged. So he was given an abdominal ultrasound ($$$), which proved he had bad gastroenteritis (swelling of the stomach and gut) but that his organs were fine. While we will never know if there were drugs in the poop (legal or illegal), they said that the only real concern for dog-human transmission of parasites, etc is Giardia. He was hooked up to an IV, given anti-vomiting medicine, and put on constant watch. This is our first huge scare with him, and we have lost several nights of sleep and missed several days of work.

We had 1 hour of visiting time with him during his stay. We thought he would be scared and lonesome, but this was like a human hospital, and there were more "nurses" around than I've seen at some ICUs. He was a huge hit amongst the vets and technicians and as I picked him up I was told he had many admirers. I know. I am one of them. Just look at the first photo of him (pre-ER experience, sleeping with his Kong!). Z and I also discussed that 8 months ago, when he was rescued off the side of a road, the folks that saved him and treated him were all vets and vets in training. So it's little surprise that he took to the CCU so quickly as he was saved from a state in which we couldn't help him.

Now he is home again, back to almost 100% of his energetic self, with all the jumping, ball chasing (the next photos are from the Harvard Arboretum, where we can see the Boston skyline and he can run free), yet I really struggle with the money we just put into him. Four times the money that we didn't have to take him to some basic training classes months ago, money that we should be spending on Z's healthcare instead, or money that could've made our holiday travel plans easier. We felt like we made good, informed decisions while in the ER, but retrospectively things always feel differently. We originally said no ultrasound, but based on his blood work the vet backed us into a corner saying that this really needed to be done to rule out pancreatitis. How well can we know and understand the well-being of our pet? When should we trust our own instincts in regard to what he needs, and when do we let a professional make those decisions for us? To what lengths will we go to protect his health? This experience has shown us that we do have mothering instincts for this little guy, and we knew when we couldn't help him anymore, plus now we are better prepared to trust those instincts in the future. We cannot, however, easily put a value on his health nor a limit to the extremes we would go to to save him from sickness or death.