broken hearts

Buddy was checked by his oncologist last week, and his lungs were fine thankfully, but the X-rays showed an enlarging heart.

So I took him to a veterinary cardiologist yesterday to follow-up on that ... and you can see that he was comfortable on the ride there:

But literally within the afternoon hours his health began to deteriorate before our eyes! He was barely strong enough for the heart doctor to do an echocardiogram, but it helped her diagnose him with acute congestive heart failure. OMG !! We were stunned, shocked, totally devastated. :-(

He needed 24-hour supportive care (oxygen, diuretics, etc), but wasn't healthy enough to travel far to get it. Even a moderate length car ride would be too stressful for him. So we rushed him from the cardiologist's office to an excellent emergency hospital ... just down the street, thankfully!! It's the same facility where Buddy had lung cancer surgery, so the staff knows and remembers our sweet Buddy (he's so popular!). It's a top-notch place with state-of-the-art facilities and highly-trained, specialized veterinary staff. So he's in really good hands, but it was touch-and-go through the night for him.

Overnight and this morning the ER doctors told me that Buddy is resting comfortably, and even ate! Today they'll be weaning him off oxygen, and depending how that goes, he could be released in a day or two. Buddy's such a strong dog! But, he's a heart disease patient now, so he'll have a lot of heart meds to take. But they will help his heart compensate for what it can't on its own anymore, truly a miracle of medicine.

Thank you so much for your thoughts and prayers for Buddy. It's so sad that a pup who has endured lung cancer now has a failing heart.

My heart hurts, too.

Susan