Let Me Introduce You to Princess

By AMY LYTHGOE

Princess was born in August of 2010. We picked her up and brought her home in October. She was a gift that I got for my husband to help heal his heart from the loss of our 17 year old Siamese cat. He and Princess instantly fell in love with each other.

On a Sunday in January of 2013 – why do things always seem to happen on the weekend?? – our sweet girl just was not her normal, perky self…we thought her tummy was upset, so we just kept her quiet all day and let her rest. That night, while we were sound asleep, we were awakened by the worst sound – our girl was screaming…a scream I have never heard before and I never want to hear again. We rushed to her kennel and she was unable to move. John managed to get her out of her kennel and hold her for her to calm down a little bit but she was constantly crying. This all happened at 4 a.m. that morning. We had to wait 3 hours until 7 a.m. for our vet to open. We were on his doorstep as he got to his office. He immediately did an X-ray, consulted with a specialist, put a shot of morphine straight into her back and told us we needed to get her to LSU (Louisiana State University) to the veterinary school as quickly as we could. I drove as fast as I could – a trip that normally would take us 4 hours, only took us a little over 2 hours – I still don’t know how I managed that.

We got to LSU, got Princess checked in and they rushed her off to do an MRI. The MRI confirmed what they suspected – a blown disc. They gave us our options: surgery (with no guarantee of her being able to walk ever again), take her home and do strict crate rest with pain meds and see if she heals or euthanize her. Our heads were swimming – we were both crying, we were completely overwhelmed and we were terrified. We chose surgery.

We were told the surgery would take about an hour and a half. It was a holiday weekend so they had to call in a team for the surgery. The surgery started at midnight. They said they would call us as soon as the surgery was over to let us know how it went. As 4 a.m rolled around and we had not gotten a call, we started to panic. We finally received the call at 5 a.m. from the surgeon. She informed us that the damage was much worse than what could be seen on the MRI. According to the MRI, she had just blown one disc. But when the surgeon got in there, it was actually 3 discs that had blown out. She explained that the explosion from the rupture was so severe that it had turned her spinal column black. The surgeon was surprised Princess had even survived the surgery. We were told we could see her as soon as they opened that morning.

We got to LSU when they opened that morning and when they brought Princess in – this is the face we saw.

We knew at that moment that we had made the correct decision.

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Amy Lythgoe

Hi there!! My name is Amy. In 2013 my precious Papillon suffered a disc episode in her back called IVDD. I was thrown into a completely unknown world that I had to figure out very quickly in order to give her the proper care. This is my story and everything I learned on this amazing journey with her.