Bobby still needs our help! We need to raise an additional $625 by April 5th to pay for his much needed coil procedure to repair his shunt. You can donate here.
We believe Bobby’s odds are great to have the coil procedure fix his shunt and allow him to go on to live a long, happy, and healthy life.
As you all know from the previous update, Wednesday’s imaging and surgery did not yield at all what we hoped for or expected. Bobby turned out to have an intrahepatic shunt, much to our surprise. In layman’s terms, this means that rather than having a vessel (one that should have closed after his birth) on the OUTSIDE of his liver, he has one that is INSIDE his liver. In both cases, this vessel bypasses the liver (which is sort of the main detox center of our body’s) so that toxic digestive byproducts re-enter his bloodstream uncleansed, causing a host of symptoms and side effects.
Closing an extrahepatic shunt, one outside his liver, would have been an easier, safer surgical procedure – and he would have been on the road to recovery already.
Closing an intrahepatic shunt, particularly one that is deep within his liver lobes as Bobby’s is, is a bit trickier.
He is not a surgical candidate, but as I described previously, he is presumably a candidate for a procedure called coiling. I say ‘presumably’ because the surgeon who saw him Wednesday is board-certified, incredibly compassionate, and experienced, but does not perform this procedure (which is understandable as only a handful of practitioners in the whole country do; it is newer and very specialized). She has sat in on this procedure and observed it, however, and she feels it is highly probable that he IS a candidate, so this gives us hope and much reassurance, However, until we verify that this is the case with a veterinarian who DOES perform it, we do not want to say with 100% certainty that he is a candidate. I hope this explains our cautionary stance for the moment.
We have spent many hours feverishly working the phones and the internet hunting for any practitioners within a three-state radius who DO offer this procedure. Ultimately, we found three possibilities: Purdue University in Indiana; the University of Michigan; and – yahoo! – Dr. Robbins, who has operated on two of my own doggies over the years and is head of surgery at Vet Specialty Center, right here in Buffalo Grove, IL, where Bobby was seen in the ER and rechecked with a neurologist a week later. The news filled us with great joy – we had previously understood that cooling was not performed at VSC due to my looking at some older or inaccurate literature online.
Before we realized Dr. Robbins did coiling, I spent a couple of days hunting down the other two clinics by calling basically every university hospital or specialty in ours and neighboring states, confirming as to whether they did the procedure, and if they did (the two university hospitals mentioned above being the only two positive responses), attempting to get referrals by asking our surgeon and her team to call the universities for phone consultations and having them fax all of Bobby’s records before we could even discuss juts estimates or possible scheduling dates. It boiled down to two hospitals which did not offer non-profits any discount, and both with estimates running between five to six thousand dollars.
We were floored…not because these are unreasonable, I don’t mean to suggest that – but because we have spent so much yet consistently only been able to proceed by baby steps. This has been such an incredible challenge for so many weeks now: a medical mystery…and much financial worry, about our ability to help him…and a source of much stress as we are so concerned for his health and for his future. The unanswered questions are still littered all around us, we are still picking up the financial pieces of his needs to date, and now a fresh and HUGE looming worry on the horizon. That’s what I mean by floored, and I mean no disrespect to the hospitals and staff who kindly took the time to consult with our surgeon and review Bobby’s records. It was just so much to process.
However, just as I was picking my jaw up from the ground, I went hunting for some other scholarly articles and there, over nine years ago, was one stating Dr. Mitch Robbins as one of the few veterinarians in the country who performed coiling. My heart skipped a beat, and I immediately called.
The wonderful staff there knew I was talking about Bobby as soon as I mentioned our foundation’s name, and I was connected to surgery. Sure enough, the staff there assured me that Dr. Robbins does indeed do the procedure; that we would once again receive our kind non-profit discount since our paperwork was already on file at VSC from Bobby’s ER and internist visits; and that he could do it for us for approximately $3300 – 4000, before our discount.
We are thrilled, and very very very hopeful!!
We have set up an April 5 appointment, as Dr. Robbins is on vacation from now until then. His first day back is April 5, as a matter of fact, and we are one of his first appointments, at 10:20 a.m. We so appreciate their getting Bobby in so quickly!
Bobby’s records from his regular vet and of course, from the ER and internist at VSC, are already in a file they are assembling. His surgeon from Wednesday and her staff have sent along his records from last week, and are kindly burning a disk with his CT portogram which they are sending to me so I can bring it to his appointment.
Dr. Robbins will have a look at all of Bobby’s records, review the findings on the disk, and examine Bobby himself. Only then, will we know for sure whether he is a promising candidate for the procedure. We can only hope and pray until then, so please keep bombing Bobby with your well wishes! It has helped him so much thus far…I am praying it will help him even further now, to where we can finally find resolution for this sweet boy.
If he is indeed likely to benefit from the procedure, he is already booked to go ahead with it that very same morning. In the meantime, he will continue in foster care on the same medical management: his prescription diet, antibiotics, and a laxative syrup.
Between now and then, only one piece of information is pending. Bobby’s surgeon took a liver biopsy on Wednesday. It takes several days for results to return, so I should hear back from her sometime this week. I don’t think she is expecting any exciting results, so if there are no unusual findings, and he does fine, I won’t have much medically to update about in the coming two weeks.
However, it seems we may come knocking one last time on behalf of Bobby. This seems inevitable, if we are to give him every best chance. And I am so sorry in advance, but feel compelled to let you all know this, that we may in all likelihood need to relaunch a funding campaign for him, albeit one for hopefully quite a bit less this time.
His initial expenses when he first begin having collapsing episodes, with visits to the regular vet, the ER at VSC, and the internist at VSC – with their many generous discounts and price reductions and kindnesses – totaled some $2600+ $150 in boarding. The wonderful folks at the Premier Veterinary Group in Grayslake went out of their way to help us too, giving us an amazing 20% discount and helping us by cutting as many costs as possible, Still, Bobby had surgery, a biopsy was sent out, and of course he underwent the big expense of the specialized CT portogram – which would have ultimately been required prior to the coiling procedure anyway, so this was necessary regardless. Bobby’s total costs came to a little over $2400, which was over $1000 under the low end of our estimate, for those of you who have been following the numbers closely – and we are so thankful to Premier for their incredible compassion for Bobby! It will help HUGELY as we move forward, as we now have approximately $550 left over from our fundraiser going into our upcoming VSC appointment.
Still, even at the estimate’s lowest end and with our discount, we are looking at approximately $3000 needed. We are grateful at least that we have almost 1/5 of that already covered, thanks to all of your compassionate giving and the generosity of the many specialists, surgeons, and clinicians who have already helped Bobby. But we are also admittedly a little stymied as we try to consider how we will manage to raise the remaining 4/5 by two weeks from tomorrow!
Another (!) fundraiser, at the moment, seems like the only answer. But we are working on every possibility feverishly, and under this time constraint, so please stay tuned.
And thank you AGAIN for all of your incredible support, prayers, shares, and caring for Bobby. There are not enough words of thanks available!