Bijoux - the day after...
Wow - what a roller coaster ride...
The good news is that Bijoux is still alive, but there are a few bits of baddish news and she is not out of the woods yet...
The summary version is that she spent 5 hours under anesthetic yesterday. The doctors were amazing and did their very best to try and help her. She basically had 3 specialists working on her the entire time.
As I explained before, the diagnosis was Vascular Ring Anomaly which is quite rare. Of those rare cases, about 95% of the time the issue is called Persistent Right Aortic Arch (PRAA). Of the remaining 5% there are 7 other conditions that could cause the same symptoms, only 2 of which need to be addressed by going in on the other side of the heart...
Well - you can guess what's coming can't you? Sure enough - our rare girl did not have PRAA, nor did she have anything that could be fixed from that side of the chest. By the time that all possibilities had been explored and ruled out she had been under for almost 3 hours.
The other thing that was very apparent was that her esophagus was packed solid with "gunk". The vets could not believe that she had been able to eat at all (She has been eating one to two cans of diluted wet food every day), and they could not move the solid mass of stuff out of her esophagus.
The decision was whether to continue under anaesthetic and do a second, entirely different surgery to remove the mess in her esophagus - or to let her die on the table without recovering her.
She is such a feisty girl, with such a will to live, that the decision had to be made to give her another chance...
Sooooo - they started the second surgery - a small incision in the esophagus. They pushed from the bottom and tugged from the top and eventually pulled out a solid "tube" of hair, partially digested food, and unidentifiable gunk out of her. (Imagine something like you would fish out of your bathtub drain and you would be pretty close...)
While doing this, the endotracheal tube popped out - which meant that she had no airway...
While one vet worked to reinsert it, Bijoux's heart rate slowed dramatically - the other vet needed to start open heart massage to keep her heart going. Once the tube was back in everything perked right back to normal - It was very close though.
Bijoux now has a feeding tube in place (hopefully short term only) to bypass the part of her esophagus that was opened, and allow it to heal. Apparently esophageal tissue does not typically heal very well, so she is still in danger of infection, tissue breakdown, or other complications. She is in the ICU unit and receiving the best of care though.
The good news is that once the stuff was removed from her esophagus, the constricted area could be seen to be larger than previously thought. As long as we can manage to keep her esophagus fairly clear, she should be able to eat much better. The bad news is, that since the vascular problem is on the other side of her heart, the likelihood of it being fixable are very small - even if she could survive another big surgery...
Of course, the extra surgery has pushed her bill up too. I think at the moment we are looking at around $2500, but if we had been doing this anyplace else we would be around the $10,000 to $12,000 mark - obviously we are getting a VERY good deal, even though it is still a lot of money...
So please, if you pray, or can send healing vibes, thoughts and good wishes her way it would be much appreciated. The next few days will be critical and then we will see where we are at.
Thank you to everyone who has phoned or emailed asking about her. The fact that you are following her story is very touching and really, really helpful!
I hate to even ask, but the bills are there. If everyone reading this could consider making a one-time special donation of $10, $20 or whatever just for her, it would go a long way to covering her bill. You can access our online donation page through the Project Jessie website http://www.projectjessie.ca/ or directly at https://wwws.vex.net/aac/jessieform.py
She is a great little cat and we are really hoping she will make a full recovery.
Thank you for caring!
Shelly and Bijoux
The good news is that Bijoux is still alive, but there are a few bits of baddish news and she is not out of the woods yet...
The summary version is that she spent 5 hours under anesthetic yesterday. The doctors were amazing and did their very best to try and help her. She basically had 3 specialists working on her the entire time.
As I explained before, the diagnosis was Vascular Ring Anomaly which is quite rare. Of those rare cases, about 95% of the time the issue is called Persistent Right Aortic Arch (PRAA). Of the remaining 5% there are 7 other conditions that could cause the same symptoms, only 2 of which need to be addressed by going in on the other side of the heart...
Well - you can guess what's coming can't you? Sure enough - our rare girl did not have PRAA, nor did she have anything that could be fixed from that side of the chest. By the time that all possibilities had been explored and ruled out she had been under for almost 3 hours.
The other thing that was very apparent was that her esophagus was packed solid with "gunk". The vets could not believe that she had been able to eat at all (She has been eating one to two cans of diluted wet food every day), and they could not move the solid mass of stuff out of her esophagus.
The decision was whether to continue under anaesthetic and do a second, entirely different surgery to remove the mess in her esophagus - or to let her die on the table without recovering her.
She is such a feisty girl, with such a will to live, that the decision had to be made to give her another chance...
Sooooo - they started the second surgery - a small incision in the esophagus. They pushed from the bottom and tugged from the top and eventually pulled out a solid "tube" of hair, partially digested food, and unidentifiable gunk out of her. (Imagine something like you would fish out of your bathtub drain and you would be pretty close...)
While doing this, the endotracheal tube popped out - which meant that she had no airway...
While one vet worked to reinsert it, Bijoux's heart rate slowed dramatically - the other vet needed to start open heart massage to keep her heart going. Once the tube was back in everything perked right back to normal - It was very close though.
Bijoux now has a feeding tube in place (hopefully short term only) to bypass the part of her esophagus that was opened, and allow it to heal. Apparently esophageal tissue does not typically heal very well, so she is still in danger of infection, tissue breakdown, or other complications. She is in the ICU unit and receiving the best of care though.
The good news is that once the stuff was removed from her esophagus, the constricted area could be seen to be larger than previously thought. As long as we can manage to keep her esophagus fairly clear, she should be able to eat much better. The bad news is, that since the vascular problem is on the other side of her heart, the likelihood of it being fixable are very small - even if she could survive another big surgery...
Of course, the extra surgery has pushed her bill up too. I think at the moment we are looking at around $2500, but if we had been doing this anyplace else we would be around the $10,000 to $12,000 mark - obviously we are getting a VERY good deal, even though it is still a lot of money...
So please, if you pray, or can send healing vibes, thoughts and good wishes her way it would be much appreciated. The next few days will be critical and then we will see where we are at.
Thank you to everyone who has phoned or emailed asking about her. The fact that you are following her story is very touching and really, really helpful!
I hate to even ask, but the bills are there. If everyone reading this could consider making a one-time special donation of $10, $20 or whatever just for her, it would go a long way to covering her bill. You can access our online donation page through the Project Jessie website http://www.projectjessie.ca/ or directly at https://wwws.vex.net/aac/jessieform.py
She is a great little cat and we are really hoping she will make a full recovery.
Thank you for caring!
Shelly and Bijoux
posted by Shelly @ 12:39
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