Tidus Legacy

The death of Pongo

This post is the story of the last day in the life of a dog. He had been crushed by a car. We named him Pongo.
Pongo died. But he didn’t die alone, he died having two amazing surgeons fighting for his life.
This post shows a few hours in the life of Let’s Adopt! Global; few hours that happened away from everyone’s eyes, there was no mention in our FB wall, nothing. There was no time for awareness or ChipIns or what have you, we had to rush to try to save a life.
Please keep reading, and if the message resonates in you, please share it in the end..

Pongo arrived to us after having been run over by a car. He was in shock, we proceeded to quickly stabilize him and we took some X-rays to see the extent of his injuries. The Xrays showed this, a multiple fracture of the hip.

We scheduled him to be operated the following morning.

A few hours later Pongo was substantially bloated. We feared the worst, sedated him again and run a catheter up his ureter to visualize the route taken by his bodily fluids. What we discover left us frozen…

When the hip got broken, the fragments of snapping bone acted like a blade, literally shredding his bladder to pieces. Pongo’s urine was not being discharged normally, instead it was being released all inside his body.

We opened immediately,  quickly searched the location where his bladder should have been, and our fears were confirmed. The bladder was destroyed.

It was a desperate situation. First we had to drain all the fluid stored in Pongo’s cavities.

 

There was not much time to think… the only alternative was to proceed a salvage procedure consisting in surgically implant the two ureters, coming from the kidneys onto the colon, and have the liquids discharged that way. It was a daring move, but the only one that could save Pongo’s life.

This is just a detail of how that procedure happened and the final result.

 

The procedure was a success, Pongo had a viable evacuation system, now we could only hope for the best.

Sadly, it couldn’t be… As we reorganized Pongo’s organs we could finally contemplate the state of his intestines… They were the intense red that showed widespread coagulation.

We had some hope his intestines would heal with time, but alas, it didn’t happen. Pongo made good progress through the night but died with the sunrise.

The life of a young dog — a dog that had a full journey ahead of him — terminated because of a tragic traffic accident.

Now, the question… why did I tell you this story with such level of detail? Two reasons:

1. To show you that medecine is not a exact science. Sometimes you deal with a condition only to have that life taken away by another related problem. There are thousands of factors to consider, small details and nuances that can mean the difference buy ambien online between life and death, and in the end, whether the animal survives or not doesn’t really depend on us. We can only do our best work, to fight with all our resources, but in the end, the battle is won, or lost, by the animal.

2. Anyone involved in animal rescue or that has had the misfortune of having his own animal operated in an emergency procedure such as this one knows the costs involved. Many times private families are not willing or able to meet those costs. Let’s Adopt! has a very simple policy, to save the life, at whatever the cost, if there’s hope. Each and every one of our rescues are given full chances from a medical point of view. And for those medical treatments, we pay dearly. And we do so, because we we treat our rescues exactly in the same way we would treat a family member. Life is priceless, for us there is no economical consideration whilst we are fighting for the life of an animal. Our protocols are designed to reduce waste and to maximize life saving but we will never compromise a life because of lack of funds.

We can only do this thanks to the contributions of our members to our Simba Fund. We usually run individual fund raisers to cover the treatments of a number of animals that we manage to feature through our page. Whatever is left from those treatments goes back to the fund, and those reserves are what allow us to treat animals like Pongo.

Pongo’s medical bill was covered with funds that were left from the incredible outpour of support of our members that rallied to support Tidus. Those reserves have saved many lives in the last few weeks.

Pongo’s is not the only one that received a chance thanks to Tidus legacy. A surprising number of animals that didn’t have the chance to be profiled publicly received and are currently receiving treatment thanks to those funds. Animals like Flea, Luck (Suerte), Aigua (Water), Mickey Mouse, Pipo, Arnie, Narco, Gipsy, Paquita, Adele, Donnie, Jack and many others received this type of medical attention because of it.

Let’s Adopt! Global is an amazing community, capable of achieving miracles, and this is only possible thanks to the constant and sustained contributions of our members. I dare in saying there is NOTHING like it in the world, an incredible network of good acting on behalf of the animals. Like it or not, we are building something amazing, day after day, a group performing daring feats, assisting other organizations and individual rescuers in cases that they find impossible to handle. Turning around the lives of the animals, forever.

This is who we are, this is what we do… and this is Tidus Legacy….