No one ever wants their pet to be sick but it was very difficult when Jack came in not very well. Jack is a 12 year old Westie and along with his mum and dad have been long term friends of the practice and great supporters of us.
Jack is normally regular in his appetite, his walks and his toilets but over the last few months Jack had started acting oddly, after eating he would become very bloated, sometimes he would be sick but most worryingly he started crying in pain and becoming unsettled. Initially Jack responded to medication but on one time became particularly bad and the medication didn’t settle him. X-rays showed that his stomach and his bowels were very dilated. We suspected that they were inflamed but on the x-rays alone we couldn’t tell. Because of his age we always worry that there is something else going on and after discussing the options with his owner we decided to open Jack up and have a look what was going on a procedure we call an exploratory laparotomy (ex lap). During the ex lap there were several abnormal areas noted and biopsies (tissue samples) were taken from Jack’s liver, stomach and intestines.
Following his ex lap Jack stayed with us but his mum and dad came in to visit him and when he ate some chicken for them you could see the relief that we had more answers. His mum described him as a naughty boy but he was their naughty boy but for us he was a model patient! We were delighted when we got his biopsy results back. They had not picked up anything nasty and concluded that there was inflammatory processes going on. We also got a diagnosis of something called helicobacter a bacteria that lives in the stomach. Any animal of any age can have the helicobacter and it doesn’t always cause a problem. However a study in humans showed that by giving three weeks of specific treatment against the helicobacter eliminates the symptoms of vomiting so for Jack we thought there was no harm in treating Jack for this.
The great news is Jack is doing great and is off on his holidays with his mum and dad! Here he is waving us goodbye!
