Von What?

We have a very long history of weird stuff happening to our dogs and family members.  It’s something in the genes I think.  Or perhaps one of our ancestors built something on top of an Indian burial ground.  Whatever it is, the cosmos, fate, karma… it’s usually stacked against us.

Whether it’s purchasing a flawed item, a home repair project gone awry, or a medical situation – we usually hear “Out of a million times this will only happen once.  You just have bad luck.” from someone involved in the fiasco.

So of course when Duchess got old enough to be spayed, it was time to research all the possible things that could go wrong… because that’s usually what happens when it comes to us.  Giant breeds such as the Great Dane have special requirements when it comes to surgeries, and there is a fantastic post on the DOL forum that outlines the things to discuss with your vet before scheduling the surgery.  Actually, it’s a great idea to discuss any potential problems with your vet prior to any surgery for all dogs.  You’d be surprised – if your vet is a good one like ours, they really enjoy conversing with owners that take the health of their pets seriously.

You’ll notice on the post I linked on the forum, that number 4 states:

Ensure that you elect to have the pre-surgical blood work done (CBC and serum chemistry panel) and ask them to also include a CLOTTING PROFILE.

So that’s just what we did.  I dropped Duchess off early that morning before work so that they could get the blood work done.  About an hour later I got a phone call on my cell – it was the vet’s office.  I couldn’t answer the call immediately so I let it go to voicemail as my heart began to pound faster with each passing minute.  Many people have lost their Danes on the spay table due to bleeding issues so of course my mind went to the worst possible scenario – because as mentioned above, that’s just the way it goes in our house.

When I got the voicemail a little later, it was my vet saying, “Don’t worry, nothing is wrong… I just need to discuss Duchess’ blood work with you.”  *sigh*  Of course we need to discuss the blood work.  We’ve obviously purchased one of the only 2 Great Danes known in the written history of the entire world to have the uber rare form of Doggie Ebola.

I called the clinic and they patched me right through to the doc.  Having known us over the past 15 years or so (and the many nights I’ve called and awakened him because our dogs refuse to have emergencies during normal business hours) he knew I’d be thinking the worst.  If I remember correctly, the first words out of his mouth weren’t hello – they were “Everything’s fine, don’t worry, we haven’t even done anything yet.”

Mmm k.  So then what’s the phone call about eh?  I was told that her blood was not clotting well, which had been my fear all along leading up to the surgery.  He said that he had taken some blood and sent it off to the hospital to have a full workup done.  Wait a minute – did I hear that right?  My dog’s blood was going to the hospital for a workup?  Maybe I didn’t hear that right, but in my adrenaline rushed, panic stricken state that’s what I understood – so I’m sticking with it.  Can you imagine if the samples had gotten mixed up with some patient there?  I’m sorry Ms. Smith, but it looks like your child doesn’t have H1N1 as we thought… we need to talk.

The vet also said that he wanted to rule out Von Willebrand’s disease.  Von who?  Van Helsing?  My dog has a disease that turns her into a vampire killer?  That doesn’t sound bad at all – kinda cool actually.  The late nights would eventually wear us down, but maybe I could take a different job to work around her schedule… all in the name of making the world a safer place of course.

He explained this disease several times, but I still couldn’t get my head around it, so I had to google it.  Von Willebrand’s is a form of inherited hemophilia in dogs I found out.

Here’s the kicker.  The only place in the U.S. that tests for Von Willebrand’s is Cornell in New York.  So we had to ship her blood across the nation and wait for the results.  I was told we needed to postpone her surgery until we got the results back and that I could come pick her up.

I went to pick Duchess up, who was thoroughly confused as to why I felt like the vet’s office was an appropriate place for morning doggie daycare and the receptionist informed me that I could pay later because, “I have no idea what to charge for that blood test, we’ve never had to do that before.”

There it is!  That line we always hear no matter what we’re doing.  Of course you’ve never had to do that before – because we’ve never owned a giant breed before.  If we’d had giant dogs this entire time, it would be a routine procedure for our local clinic by now because we’re cursed obviously.

A couple weeks went by with us sitting on pins and needles.  What if she tore off a claw and bled to death? (Our dogs have torn claws off several times – we’re quite adept at the ghetto triage method of packing the paw in flour now.)  What if she got a scrape while playing with the other dogs?  What if she happened to bust out the door, run away, and join up with some bad dogs and get in a gang fight?

Things were pretty tense around the house for a while.  Luckily, after a couple weeks the test came back negative which was a huge relief.  We rescheduled the surgery for another time (which is a whooooole separate ordeal unto itself).  She’s completely recovered now as you can tell by the snow pics taken the other day, but it was a rocky road there for a while.

So she’s evidently free and clear from Von Willebrand’s (and Van Helsing’s as well), which is all good.  However, I’m just waiting for the next thing to happen where we have to send off a fur sample, mouth scraping, and a piece of her ear to test for something else that’s potentially life threatening.  Let’s hope Cornell has a test for that.