Bo's Update 12:00 12/8/11

It's a Christmas Bo!

My little guy has had a rough run. My conversation this morning with Dr. Sullivan put it all in perspective. Bo has 3 major issues going on:

1. He had a herniated disc which caused paralysis/incontinence by damaging or compressing his spinal cord. Surgery was performed to repair the herniated disc, but to date he has been unresponsive to all neurological tests. We dot know if he will recover from this.
2. He is having breathing complications. In his extremely agitated and distressed state, he had worked himself up to the point of damaging his throat. The damage to his throat has caused his air passages to swell to the point of being in danger of closing off. He has had a tracheotomy to allow him to breath.
3. In the process of attempting to breath, Bo got water/saliva/mucus in his lungs. This has led to him getting pneumonia.

Anyone of the items alone is enough to put a dog into a "critical" state. The combination is "life threatening". Bo also can not understand what is happening and what is going on, but he knows something is wrong. When he is awake and alert, he has at times begun to "freak out" and work himself up again to an agitated state which becomes life threatening. This happened several times over the night. With each "agitated state", his chances for survival are diminished, not to mention being painful and full of suffering.

On the other hand, the cause of much of breathing issues has just been discovered, his pneumonia. He has only received 2 antibiotic treatments for his pneumonia. At the time of our conversation (about 2 hours ago), Bo was relaxed, sedated, and sleeping. If he stays in a "relaxed" condition, he has a chance to fight off the pneumonia and his swelling in his throat has a chance to subside. The paralysis is a whole other issue. So we are making this decision without even knowing that he will be OK in the long run.

For now we have decided to wait and see. If we give him 24 hours and he does not get agitated and his condition doesn't get worse, he has a chance to fight off the pneumonia. In the next 24 hours after that (through till Saturday) we should hopefully see signs of improvement, which means he has a shot.

However, if continues to work himself into an agitated state then we are just prolonging his suffering. We just have to hope and pray that he can stay calm so that his medications and Dr.'s can continue improving his chances.