Meet Lincoln, he is a 10 yr old male German Shepherd and he is our February Patient of the Month. On Jan 18th his owner brought him in for lethargy and not eating. Being an older boy, obviously we were worried about what we would find. Lincoln also has a history of seizures and is on 3 medications to prevent these. There were concerns of breakthrough seizures since he was not able to take his medications for a couple days. He also takes arthritis medications. Lincoln’s mom pays very close attention to him and knows her boy very well. Turns out Lincoln has a fondness for eating things that are not food. His blood work had no significant changes. We took radiographs and he was diagnosed with a slow moving intestinal foreign body. At this point, since the radiologist felt there still may be some chance of things moving so he could pass it himself, we hospitalized him and put him on a high rate of intravenous fluid to see if we could get things in motion. We also added his seizure medications in injectable form. The next morning we repeated the radiographs and unfortunately at this point the radiologist confirmed there was no movement and he was completely obstructed. We spoke with his owner and a decision was made to go to surgery to remove the obstruction. Lincoln had surgery on January 19th. We removed a small towel from his stomach to his upper intestinal tract. Lincoln was kept in the hospital another 24 hours on supportive care. He has made a full recovery and is home. He came in to get his sutures out on Monday January 30th and is doing great.
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