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Grady's Story |
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Grady was owner surrendered to Franklin County Animal Control on April 11, 2005 because he had been hit by a car and the owner did not want to pay for medical care. He was put in the back room because he was injured, and probably would have been gassed as other injured animals are. On April 14th, however, an angel was with him, and he was moved to the front with the other dogs where a Franklin County Humane Society volunteer saw him and took his picture to put on the Petfinder website. It broke everyone's heart to see this poor golden who had received no medical care for days. His back leg was broken. He was rescued first thing on Friday morning, the 15th, and taken to All Creatures Vet in Rolesville. Franklin County Humane Society had decided to take this boy into their program since a foster home had volunteered to take him. They named him "Grady" after the wonderful veterinarian who helps out the Society so much. Grady was so thankful to be in safe arms. He hugged his rescuer and was full of kisses. He rested his head on her chest while on the examining table, and closed his eyes, soaking up the hugs and head rubs. He was safe. Then the news came, that indeed his back leg was broken and appeared to have been broken for about a month. It was healing wrong, and Grady was still in a great deal of pain. The leg would require surgery, and if it couldn't be repaired, may have to be amputated. We will pray for the best. Grady went to his new foster home with pain medication but still wasn't feeling well and would not eat. Today, Sunday morning, he was rushed to the emergency vet with blood in his stool, and still no appetite. It was feared he had parvo. But an angel was with him again, and the parvo test was negative. However, he is a sick little boy, and needs IV fluids badly, and will have to be hospitalized for a couple days. Hopefully he will recover fully and all other tests will be ok. They are still running other tests. While we wish Grady a speedy recovery, and the best possible outcome when he undergoes surgery on his leg, we need to put the word out and see if we can raise some funds to help out the Franklin County Humane Society with the enormous vet bills they are now incurring. Please crosspost to everyone you know, and let's see if we can raise the needed hundreds of dollars to "Save Grady". Thanks to everyone for all of your help. We will keep you updated on Grady's condition. Prayers always welcome. Monday, April 18 Update To all those concerned about Grady I asked our FCHS vet to speak to Quail Corners to get the direct vet to vet info. I had a long conversation with our vet and also called the Quail Corners vet around 6 PM to get an update. Here is the situation. Grady is gravely ill. He would, quite frankly, be dead without the intensive rehydration that is going on intravenously. He is still vomiting and has bloody diarrhea. He is running a temp of 104 degrees and, without the pain meds, would be in constant pain from the broken pelvis and dislocated hip. He is on three different antibiotics--they just added Baytril, a high end med, in a effort to get the fever down. Obviously antibiotics do not help with viruses but they do prevent opportunistic bacterial infections from taking advantage of his weakened state. He is on anti-diarrhea and anti-nausea meds and, as I said, pain meds. Both vets feel he is certainly feeling ill but not suffering really serious pain. Clearly any surgical intervention on his leg is now secondary to seeing if we can pull him out of this downward spiral. There is not yet a definitive diagnosis. So we have authorized an ultrasound for tomorrow. This puts us well over the thousand dollar mark with him and he is still very ill. Hopefully the ultrasound will give us an idea what we are fighting. Conditions that could be treated medically include severe ulcerative colitis or gastroenteritis. Both of these would show up, if at all, as a thickened intestinal wall. Treatment is a continuation of the supportive therapy with the hope that his own system will heal itself and he will pull out if this. The kind of supportive therapy required can only be done at a 24 hour vet and involves 100s of dollars a day. If an enlarged pancreas shows up, he could have pancreatitis which again will involve the supportive therapy. There is also a chance that he could have parvo (although he tested negative for it) or one of the other viruses, like corona. Again, the treatment is basically supportive. The ultrasound may show a foreign body in the intestines, an intestinal torsion (essentially the intestines twist around themselves and the cut off loop becomes necrotic--this is not real likely as it usually kills a dog pretty quickly but a small torsion could exist), an intestinal intussusception where the intestine basically telescopes into itself with again the result of dead areas of intestine), or some traumatic injury that occurred in the car accident which was not serious enough to show up initially but has gotten progressively worse. There may turn out to be other conditions found by the ultrasound. These are the most likely ones the vets discussed with me. All of these latter four would require surgical intervention and his chances of even surviving the surgery are very slim, given his current weakened condition. There is also the consideration that this would be only the first surgery and he would still face another surgery on his hip. So I think tomorrow will be a day of decision for Grady. If you could send a good thought his way and the way of those of us who are trying very hard to make decisions in his best interest, it would be much appreciated. I will update you after the results of the ultrasound have been analyzed and reported to us. Thanks to everyone who has provided financial help. We are in pretty deep financially here for the small volunteer group that we are. We are striving to do the best for Grady without shortchanging all those animals who will come into our hands needing vet treatment tomorrow and the days after. Any help anyone can give is much appreciated. Tuesday, April 19 Update I am sorry to report that we had to euthanize Grady this morning. Overnight his condition had worsened considerably and his organs were beginning to shut down. He was still vomiting, his temp had soared to 105, and he could barely lift his head. The vet theorized that the persistent diarrhea might even have caused many small ruptures in his intestinal wall with resulting pockets of peritonitis. She felt we had reached a point that, even if the ultrasound had identified a cause, it was likely too late to save Grady. We felt we could not continue his suffering any longer now that his prognosis was so very poor. His original rescuer Debbie Hart and her friend Heather were with him when he passed so he was surrounded by love, as indeed he had been for the whole time since he had been rescued from the Franklin County Animal Control Facility last Friday. We want to thank all those who have already donated towards Grady’s care. Although he is gone, we still face the daunting task of paying for over a $1000 in vet bills for him. So if you have pledged to help, we would appreciate if you can still donate. If there should be any money left over, it would be used for the many other needy animals that come our way. We are all volunteers and nobody takes any money, even for gas. All funds go to the animals and veterinary care is our largest expense. Again thank you all for your donations and your thoughts and prayers. We only wish this could have had a happy outcome but sometimes, even with all the best efforts in the world, you cannot save every animal. But at least we made his last days as comfortable as possible and he knew he was loved and valued. Ida Estep
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| Franklin
County Humane Society, PO Box 338, Youngsville, NC 27596, (919)
990-1045, fchsncinfo@yahoo.com |