Rough Weekend...Mar. 8-10

Sadie took a turn for the worse on Saturday. The IV's that Dr. Christensen was giving Sadie just weren't beating her infection or fever back. Although the swelling in the breast tissue had gone down, Sadie had developed septic mastitis...a gangrene infection of the breast tissue and surrounding skin. Also, Sadie was developing a blood poisoning that was causing a high fever...104.5 at one time.

I took her back to KSU on Saturday night about 11:00 p.m. She received plasma, cologen and platelet tranfusions to get her stable for surgery. She started the surgery about 8:30 a.m., and was done about 2:30 p.m. Dr. Sargent, the same surgeon who did Sadie's GDV a week before, again worked on Sadie to remove the septic mastitis infection along with the gangrene tissue.

Sadie made it through the surgery, and is doing reasonably well. She is eating puppy food, but will only eat from someone's hand! Her fever is gone, she is using outdoor facilities (# 1 only so far), likes to whine/bark for attention until someone comes over to her, and then seems content.

She does have additional edema, or swelling in all of her legs (started off as only the back right leg). The doctor said this was usually do to low protein, which Sadie has, and is still fighting since the GDV surgery. They are going to do more blood and lab work to see if there is someway they can get her to absorb the protein.

She remains on IV's and anti-biotics, and so far the incision seems to be good, but it is still too early. Overall, seems like a fairly good report. Again I would like to thank Dr. Christensen and his staff for all their time and effort with Sadie that was above and beyond the call. I would also like to thank Dr. Brenner, Dr. Sargent and the student doctors at the KSU Small Animal Clinic for their help and support.

Update March 11...
Sadie remains on IV's and anti-biotics. She is eating a little better today, and Craig is going to try to go by to see her...hopefully a friendly face will make her feel a little better!


On a brighter note, the puppies continue to give us a smile back home. Feeding time is quite a lot of work, but almost always offers a humorous sight. Here are a few!!