Bianca

Bianca, my 8 year old German Shepherd, had to have emergency surgery a few weeks ago. We had no idea anything was wrong with her until she suddenly started acting funny that afternoon. It all happened so quickly, the night before she had gone for a long 2-3 mile walk to the park and she was acting normal that morning as well.
She was not wanting to get up and come when I called her to eat, and when I checked her gums they were pale so I rushed her to the vet. It turned out she was bleeding internally and had an enlarged spleen. She had to be transferred to the emergency vet where she had emergency surgery to remove her spleen that night. When they did the surgery they found several masses that had ruptured on her spleen, that's what caused the bleeding. She also needed a blood transfusion during surgery.

We had brought her to this emergency clinic partly because this was the clinic where Bianca had been a blood donor herself for two years (retired recently), they have a volunteer blood donor program where people sign up their pets to be donors. Luckily for us they happened to have blood donors there the day we had came in with our emergency and they were able to immediately use the blood from one of the donors for Bianca. I highly recommend the canine blood donor programs, if your dog is the right size (usually over 50 pounds) and friendly, many areas have these volunteer programs. Sometimes they have the volunteer programs for cats as well, one of my cats has also been a blood donor (they have to be 10 pounds or over and have the right temperament for it.)

Bianca went through surgery with no complications. Sadly this was not the end of things, as they had also found some small masses on her liver and took samples of those as well as of the ones from the spleen and a sample of the spleen lymph node to send for biopsy. The biopsy results came back positive for hemangiosarcoma, a type of cancer which is all too common in German Shepherds. However we were lucky in a way as many times this disease is not detected until it is too late to do anything so we were lucky that we rushed her in and caught it in time to be able to do the surgery...
 We consulted with an oncologist who recommended a metronomic chemotherapy protocol (low dose oral chemotherapy) which we are starting now.) My vet also gave us some supplements we can give that may help. Unfortunately the cost of the surgery and the chemotherapy treatment is quite expensive... I was able to get some help from family and put some things on credit cards but if anyone has a few dollars to spare, we have set up a ChipIn fundraising page for Bianca, which goes through Paypal: http://chicagocanine.chipin.com/biancas-cancer-treatment

Also BeatrizFortes has very kindly offered to donate all the profit from orders of her beautiful pawprint pendants($10 per pendant) from her etsy shop to Bianca's vet care: Tiny Paw Pendant in Sterling Silver by BeatrizFortes on Etsy







Below is a photo from last weekend, we got to visit my sister and her husband in a cottage they rented in Wisconsin.