About mid-morning I noticed blind Widget trying to throw up in my office … she was pretty quiet about it, no real gagging, but clearly needing to get something out. Then she went to the front door, so I opened it and off she went. I mentioned to Alayne that I’d seen her trying to vomit. A short while later, Widget was woo-woo-wooing outside my office window. In Widget-speak, she was saying "Doorman! Doorman!" I got up, let her in, and the routine started again … trying to throw up, then wanting to go out. Her tail, normally upright and bobbing, drooped.
This time Alayne followed Widget outside. A few minutes later she came back, alarmed, and said, "Widget is pooping pure blood … it’s just shooting out of her." We watched Widget a bit longer, and sure enough, she squatted and <splat!> out came this stream of blood, arcing through the air. Ohmigod. Now, usually when you have colitis, you’ll see blood, but you’ll also have some diarrhea with it … but there was no poop with this blood at all. Alayne collected a sample and found there was a lot of mucus in it, too. Back in the house, Widget took a few sips of water, then threw it up.
I called our vet clinic in Helena and asked them to have our vet, Dr. Brenda Culver, call me. Just about 15 minutes later, Widget walked into the living room and vomited a huge pool of water … and speckled throughout the water were flecks of blood. Oh, Lord.
Alayne and I stood there, and we were both thinking the same thing. No, not Widget. After all of our recent losses, the thought of something suddenly going terribly wrong with Widget … well, it raced through our minds. I will admit, I started tearing up. That’s when I realized I don’t have an emotional reserve left right now.
I called the clinic back to tell them I was bringing Widget in. While I gathered my things, Alayne got the truck ready, and we spread out the thick fleece blankets that Margaret N. in Seattle sends us. I took the photo of Widget in the back of the truck just before we left. You can see she had already started scooting the blankets around to arrange the perfect custom-fit. After all, a girl’s got to snuggle in for the 70-mile ride to Helena!
At the vet clinic, I let Widget out of the truck and took her over to the lawn to pee (they have grass, not snow, in Helena!). She walked around a bit, then stooped, and pooped pure blood again. Egads. I carried her into the building and handed her over to a vet tech, who immediately took Widget away to draw blood.
In between her other scheduled appointments, Brenda found time to do a physical exam, and then came out to talk with me. She said that given our description of what we’ve seen and her exam, she thought one possible suspect was hemorrhagic gastroenteritis, or HGE. A key to diagnosing HGE is a very high PCV (packed cell volume) on her blood work. But in addition to the blood work, Brenda was going to run additional diagnostics, as well as have her husband, Britt, our internal medicine specialist, look at Widget tomorrow.
I left little Widget at the clinic and drove back to the ranch. About 5:45 p.m., Brenda called with the blood panel report — Widget’s PCV was 67%, consistent with hemorrhagic gastroenteritis. If it does turn out to be HGE, that will be good news, because it is treatable. But Brenda cautioned that we still have other tests pending, and until we get those back and until Britt can examine Widget and review all the findings, we can’t jump to that conclusion yet.
That’s what we know at this point … I’ll update tomorrow with the latest. In the meantime, please keep Miss Woo-Woo-Woo in your thoughts!
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