Tessie's trial

She was alert, but seemed lethargic. The next morning, I found her lying outside, on the patio. She refused to eat her breakfast.

So I called the friend I carpool with to church every Sunday to let her know I wouldn't make it today and got dressed to take Tess in to Animal Emergency Referral Center on PCH and Madrid in Torrance.

Good thing we went in. After four hours of tests, the preliminary diagnosis was something called Hemorrhagic Gastroenteritis (HGE for short). (Although as of this writing, that still has not been confirmed -- we could be looking also at pancreatitis.)

Reading about HGE online, I found out that while the condition is treatable -- and, thankfully, it seldom recurs -- dogs can go into shock and even die if not given aggressive treatment within hours.

Its onset is sudden, they don't know what causes it, and symptoms include (this is pleasant) "projectile" vomting and bloody diarrhea (lots of it). That started in ernest only after Tess and I arrived at the ER. But it got so bad Sunday afternoon that the staff told me they had to tie her tail up, she was producing large volumes of waste every hour by then. 

I'm awaiting a call back from Dr. Jonnie Quantz of AERC, where Tess remains hospitalized. My own vet, Dr. Richard Palmquist, told me in a phone consultation last night that this condition typically moves through the dog's system quickly and she should be OK. We are still awaiting results from another test, however.

So we will see. More posts on this later, but we can all be grateful for the incredible, 24-hour emergency clinics we have available to us nowadays. If I'd had to wait until my own vet opened Monday morning, Tess might not be with us.

**Update: Just got word that the one outstanding test came back showing positive for pancreatitis. Prognosis possibly a little more complicated with that.

*****See updated post