Great news from the vet today. Pollo got an echocardiogram and all the fluid that was in his pericardium is COMPLETELY gone!!!! yippeee!!!!
the only fluid in his heart was blood and it was rushing around just like it was supposed to.
they did some bloodwork on him too, but the appointment was too late to get the results back today, they are checking his liver values which were normal last time and doing a CBC to check his red blood counts which were low. hopefully all that will be normal this time and we can put this whole mess behind us.
he has barely put on any weight since the last time that he was there so we have to work on that a bit as he is still a pretty skinny 63 lbs. I'd like him to be about 70 lbs. he is acting normally again; playing with Molly alot and even tormenting her a bit to make up for all the times he felt lousy and she was swatting at him to get him to play with her. they have even started to play their 'high speed chase' game in the yard.
to say I am relieved is a complete understatement. I was so afraid they were gonig to say that he had a mass in his heart that was causing the problem, but now i am more convinced than ever that it was that f'ing vet where we boarded Pollo and MOlly that at the very least neglected him into his condition, if they didn't cause it outright.
Hubby has not had his little meeting with Dr. Evil yet, he has been traveling and has not been able to connect with our vet to go over all of apollo's records with him first.
Another piece of good news is that SND (Special Needs Dobermans
www.doberman911.0rg) has agreed to help us out with the medical bills. they did a beautiful write up on Apollo - here is his page - (if you know anyone that might be interested in helping out, please feel free to forward the link)
http://www.doberman911.org/cases/apollo4.html
so now we just wait til tomorrow for the bloodwork, which I suspect will be fine, judging how Pollo has been behaving, and then hopefully this whole nightmare will be behind us and all that will be left are the vet bills and a healthy doberboy.
oh, that sound you hear? it's one big GIGANTIC PHEW!!!!! coming from me and my family.
thanks again for all the support and PM's through all this mess. it has been so appreciated - you just have no idea
cc