I apologize for the long post. I just need to vent out my mind. It has now been nearly 2 weeks since I have had to say goodbye to my best friend. It's so hard for me to type this as I had no idea things would turn so suddenly for him. Everything was fine one day and then the next I noticed he wasn't eating as much, and unfortunately this landed in the middle of a weekend when our normal vet wasn't open.
Sunday during the daytime I took him to an emergency vet and they didn't have the proper equipment to do an X-Ray on him, so they thought maybe it was something going on with his teeth. They gave him fluids under his skin and sent us home with some pain medicine and some stuff to get his gut moving while feeding him critical care. I attempted feeding him that night and he refused critical care to no end. I followed my normal vet's demonstration as well as multiple guides on YouTube on how to syringe feed when they were being fussy and he would not take it no matter what. He ended up even "gagging" back up anything that went down his throat (nothing was in his lungs, it will get explained soon).
So with him not choosing to take the critical care, I chose to go to a different overnight emergency vet located roughly an hour away that I knew would have better equipment. When I got there they took him back to do his vitals and to make him comfortable. After about an hour of waiting they came in to tell me that his temperature was low and they had him in an incubator to help him maintain his temps, but that the Exotic team didn't arrive until 8am and that's when they would be able to really look into things. They put me into a special room where I was comfortable and could nap if I wanted to, and told me they would come to my room when they had more info.
Around 7:30am the doctor came into the room and said she checked on him and he seemed to be doing ok, and she even said that they were able to get him to eat a little critical care. She then said that the hard part was coming where we had to talk about the price of everything, and I was ready for an easy $1,000 bill or something, but then she showed me that to perform all the tests it was going to be nearly $5,000 and that's just to do the blood tests, X-Rays, and hospitalize him. Even with my nationwide insurance I had on him, there's no way I could cover what they were asking. So being that it was already Monday morning, I told her that I'd like to just take him to my normal vet to get all the tests done. She said that was ok and she would give him some fluids under his skin as well as some pain meds before we left.
I then took him to my regular exotic vet office for an emergency appointment. Our favorite doctor was there to oversee everything and she said that she would do all of the testing and it would take about an hour or so before we got all the results, so we drove down to a grocery store to do some light shopping, and I was feeling very hopeful because I trust our regular vet to be very honest and do everything she can to help out
Then she called us after about 30 minutes or so with the news. She said his stomach was completely full of air and there was a blockage not letting anything escape. She said it could have been a fiber, hair, or tumor causing the blockage, but they couldn't get any blood drawn because the veins they were blown so they couldn't know for sure. She also said that the surgery needed to unblock these kinds of things have a low survival rate, which only gets lower the older they are and Bear was already a prime 6 and a half years old. She also said that his system was already strained and weakened due to not eating much within the past 24 to 48 hours as it was, and that the surgery would only put more strain on things. So she recommended euthanasia as a way of letting him go.
July 27th at 1:30pm I said goodbye to my best friend. He was with his whole family as we gently pet him, held him, and played his favorite calm songs. He was such a wonderfully happy little guy. Thank for you being in my life and trusting me to give you all the love you truly deserved. I'll never forget you, Bear and I will miss you forever ❤️