Finley River Retrievers: Sandy's C-Section Surgery

Sam keeps nagging me to put up pictures of Sandy's c-section.
The vet let us stay in the operating room the whole time and let me take pictures.

Why would you take pictures?

I don't know, I'm weird. Always have been. Growing up on a farm, there are sometimes things that happen that people would rather not think about, much less look at.
Not me.
If I caught wind of my dad talking about pulling a calf, stitching up a horse that had slit it's throat on barbed wire so bad the esophagus was exposed, cuts to the bone, etc. I was ready to take a look!
But I'm not so sure about anyone else.
So here is your warning...

It all started when Sandy got fat.
Ok, well...it didn't start there I guess.

Really fat!

Really, really fat!

Friday night at 10:30, a little girl was born!
We got ourselves ready to stay up.

At 2:30 am we were still waiting. She had only had the one.
We called the ER vet and told them the scenario. They suggested we bring her in to see. So by 2:45 am we had Sandy and the little puppy in the car for a 35 minute drive.

They took some x-rays and said there didn't appear to
be any blockage.
We gave her some Oxycontin and she had 2 more while we were there.
The vet said she would probably have about 4 more and things appeared to be fine.
So we went home.
We got home at 5:30, Sam went to bed, I stayed up and waited for more puppies. . .
Nothing.
At 8:00 am I called the vet. She said we should probably take her to our local vet when they opened.

But then she had a few more in about an hour.

At 2:30 pm on Saturday she had the 8th one.
But she continued having contractions.
So I. . . called the vet.
She said that the contractions were normal, the lumpiness in her abdomen was probably her uterus contracting.

So we went to my nephew's birthday party.

We came home and nothing had changed.
Still contractions, still lumps, no new puppies.
Sunday morning we stayed home from church with her.

That afternoon we went to my other nephew's
birthday party.
We were anxious to get back home so headed out early.
On the way home, I called our local vet who was on call and gave her the situation.
She wasn't sure either and said I could bring her in or it was something that could probably wait til Monday morning.

When we got home, Sandy wouldn't lift her head.
I took her temperature.
It was 106.7 (normal is 100-101)
So guess what I did?
I called the vet.
She said, "Meet me at the clinic, now."

X-rays showed that she was still full of puppies.
This is what we'd been trying to say!!!
I said, "Are they still alive?"
"No. We've got to get them out."

So in no time at all we sedated her and slapped her
up on the operating table.

This was what she pulled out first!
No wonder she was still fat and lumpy!

She dug around some more...
and this came out!!!
No wonder she was still fat and lumpy!!!!
The black stuff, that's septic, toxic, decay. The uterus was being stretched to the max, if it busted and that got inside her, it would be all over.
That was probably what was causing the high fever.
So it was out with the uterus!!!

Here we go. . .
the reason Sam wanted me to post about this surgery.
He got to step in and hook Sandy up to oxygen.
or more sedative, I'm not real sure.
Anyway, Sam pretty much thought he'd done the entire surgery.

And there you have it.
All that and just a 4 inch incision.
If anyone cares, I'm the one who took out the stitches.

But then we couldn't get Sandy to wake up.
That's when the vet got concerned.
She said, we had done all we could and it was up to Sandy now.
It was very reassuring.