One Year Later and Still Alive and Kicking

I just looked at the calendar and realized an important anniversary is here.  One year ago Hubby and I were frantically seeking emergency help for our dog Maggie (Mag Pie, The Pie, The Puppy Pie, Her Pieness, Her Pieness on Her Throne).  We love all our dogs, but every so often in a person's life one dog comes along who is truly amazing and captures your attention like no other.  Maggie is that kind of dog, and has been from the moment we laid eyes on her in her cage at the SPCA.  She is the most stoic dog I've ever seen.  All the other dogs were barking and howling while flinging themselves at the cage bars.  Maggie just looked at us calmly as if she were saying, "Yeah, so what?  You're out there and I'm in here.  Whaddaya gonna do?"  Nothing disturbs her calm.  Well, except for a big thunderstorm.  :-)

I awoke on this morning last year around 6:30 a.m. hearing panting.  I assumed it was our older dog, Chica, who tended to pant a lot while she was dreaming.  The more I listened, the more something just seemed wrong.  Then I realized it was Maggie, not Chica making all that noise, and she was on the floor instead in the bed with us as usual.

Trying to keep quiet so as not to wake up Hubby (he's a total Grinch if something wakes him up) I got out of bed and put my hands on Mags.  "WHAT?!!"  She was burning up.  My yell woke up Hubby who launched out of bed with his hair on fire.  "WTH are you doing?!!"  It took a few seconds to get the lights turned on and get Hubby convinced that the house hadn't been invaded by armed gangstas, but that Maggie was seriously ill.  Her gums were white and all she could do was breathe.

So what does Hubby do?  He goes to take a freakin' shower.  A shower!!  Just as he got in, I discovered something wrong with Maggie's rear end.  There was about 1" of some kind of a stick hanging out of her rectum.  In her entire 4 years, I had never seen Maggie chew on anything that wasn't a Mom-approved dog toy.  So just how did this... thing, get into her body?  Well, I started screaming at Hubby to get the H*** out of the shower.  We had to find help right now.

I called the emergency vet that is all of 5 minutes away from our home and is supposed to be manned until 7:00 a.m.  I placed the call at 6:45.  "Well, it was really quiet so all our vets just left for the day.  No, we can't call them to come back in."  There followed an hour that I'll never forget.  There are several vet clinics in our immediate vicinity, none of which had a doctor available at that hour.  We drove around with the cell phone dialing away while Maggie lay dying in my lap in the back seat of the car.  Finally, we found a vet at 8:00. Dr. Ansari was the first of many vets who saved Maggie's life that day.  Bless his heart, he cancelled every appointment he had that morning so he could devote himself entirely to Maggie's emergency.

We went home and paced the floors waiting to hear... whatever.  We knew it was bad.  As it turned out, Maggie hadn't eaten anything.  She had impaled herself on a bamboo plant stake out by the back fence - probably jumping at a possum in the middle of the night.  We never heard a thing.  That poor dog had 13-1/2 inches of bamboo in her body, and she jumped back in through the dog door, went back to our bedroom and just laid down to die.  Not a peep out of her.  How's that for stoicism?

Dr. Ansari cut her open and removed the stick (stake).  It had punctured through her lower large intestine and he couldn't reach the area to repair the hole.  Spilled fecal material already had a case of peritonitis started in her abdomen.  Our choice was to either put her down right there and then, or take her to Gulf Coast Veterinary Associates in Houston.  No choice there.  We paid the $1,000 owing to Dr. Ansari for his incredible work, and hauled butt down to GCVA.

Gulf Coast is the kind of facility that humans would be more than happy to stay at during an illness.  Every bit of equipment is state-of-the-art, and every imaginable specialty is represented.  They met us at the door with a gurney and whisked Maggie off to prep her for surgery.  In a perfect brain fog, we listened as the surgeon told us not to get our hopes up.  If she couldn't reach the intestinal injury through her belly, she would have to split Maggie's pelvis.  Estimated cost of treatment:  $8,000 depending on a lot of different factors.  We certainly didn't have eight grand lying around doing nothing, so thank God for good credit.  Maggie wasn't giving up and we couldn't give up on her.  For the second time in one day, we went home to wait for bad news.  I think that was the longest three hours I've ever endured.

The phone finally rang around 4:30 with the first ray of hope.  Maggie had made it through her second major surgery of the day, and without a split pelvis.  The hole was repaired, so all we could do was wait for the massive amounts of IV antibiotics to deal with the peritonitis.  So many things could have gone wrong, but they didn't.

Maggie shocked everyone.  She was in ICU for 4 more days, and we actually got to take her home that Saturday.  The vets were amazed at her rapid recovery.  Another week or so of quiet and tons of oral antibiotics at home, and we took her in to have the gazillion staples removed from her belly.  You'd think Maggie would run screaming from the building.  Nope.  She knew right where to go and led the way to the elevators and down into the bowels of the hospital grinning all the way.  And that was the end of that.  Well, except for the $6,000 hit to Master Card.  Oh well, it was better than the estimated $8,000. :-)

Mags is now five years old and just as active as she ever was.  She loves life and makes us happy.  She was, and is, worth every last penny spent to save her life, and earned a new nickname in the process: Maggie the Miraculous Wonder Pie.