My Baby Mac

by David
(Audubon, NJ)

The pain is fresh.. it's hard to find anything comforting right now.

3 weeks ago, I lost my younger Boxer who was 2 years old, to a collapsed trachea. My wife and I were 400 miles from home on a weeks vacation in Rodanthe, North Carolina. Mac had no signs of issue the day we left home to get to our vacation rental house.

2 days in, Mac developed a slight cough and we took him to the nearest vet (35 miles) and the doc was thorough in his evaluation. There was nothing going on in the lungs so it was diagnosed as (most likely) kennel cough/dog flu. Mac had his yearly treatment for kennel cough, as did my other Boxer, but as most are aware, it doesn't cover all the strains.

Anyway, we came home from the vet with antibiotics and an anti-inflammatory medicine. 36 hours later, he was much worse and it was 1am when he started freaking out and running around. He was vomiting white mucous and then would collapse on the floor in a sitting position and sound like he couldn't catch his breath.

We made phone calls to all the vets within the OBX region and all were closed. The nearest darn place was 109 miles away in Chesapeke, Virginia. By the time we got out the door after all the phone calls, it was almost 2am.

Naturally, I had about 50 miles of range in the tank since I hadn't gassed up again after reaching our vacation home. I had to go 30 of those miles before I found an open gas station. So, I got lucky there.

2 hours later, we arrived at the Chesapeke Emergency hospital... did I mention there were no 24 hour emergency animal hospitals anywhere on the Outer Banks? Remember that if you love your animals and want to go there on vacation.

They took him back and a very long story made short, they tried to intubate him and the normal diameter tube wouldn't fit and neither would the next 2 sizes down. During the course of everything, they found from an x-ray that his trachea had collapsed. This is so rare in Boxers, or any large dog, that nobody had ever heard of this before in a dog his size.

Over the course of the next 13 hours we went from the hospital saying they were going to do a tracheostomy (later, they decided they couldn't even though it was the only immediate thing available to stabilize him).

They kept my baby Mac sedated all day and another long story short... the only other option was to move him to a critical care facility another 20 minutes away to put him on a ventilator with 24 hour care.

The doctor was giving us info on the cost of this move starting at $5k/day just for being in the unit. The other requirements would have put us up to anywhere from $15k ~ ??? since it wasn't known what could be done at the time.

My wife asked me what we should do and I said I can't tell you because you'll hate me for the rest of my life.

We made calls to credit cards, banks, and even my parents to get together a few days worth of care coverage for my baby.

The vet physician told us that the issue was causing a bleed and it was moving down into his lungs so he was, essentially, starting to drown.
I told the doc to end it. I would have gladly paid anything if they hadn't indicated that the issue was starting to affect other systems and functions.

He went to sleep at 4:30 that afternoon. His big brother was in the room with us when it happened. My other Boxer, Satch, lifted his head to Mac's ears during the process.

I wish I had the money to just say yes from the start. We were already $2500 deep by the end that day at the emergency hospital. We have his ashes with the other boys at our home now. Fortunately, the crematory was able to ship his ashes to us, along with his paw print.

I wish I could have saved him. I wish I could have found out what caused this so nobody else needed to go through with it, or at least have an idea what to do about it somewhere on the books for others to benefit from.

I lost my 2 year old boxer, Mac, that Thursday in Virginia while I was on the last vacation I will ever take in the Outer Banks after 11 years of going there with my animals. I can't take the chance that this would happen away from home again. If I were at home, I'd at least have known an immediate place to take them instead of losing 2 hours on the road traveling to a place Id never been and hoping others I'd never met knew what they were doing.

I'm equally sad and angry. I've lost animals before, typically from old age, not from a defect or some kind of aberration or a part of him that didn't get bigger as he did.

He was stolen from us and my wife and I are broken right now. I know that the feelings aren't as sharp as time goes by, but this little guy had such a huge personality. Boxers, typically, have great personalities and are very full of life. Mac was no different and he completed our little circle. Sometimes I don't think I have any tears left and then I find out I was very wrong.
To anyone who lets their pets into their heart, there is no stopping the happiness we feel and the sting when they are taken from us. I miss him so much.

Sorry for the novel, but once I got started, I couldn't stop.

Thanks to anyone who reads this and can appreciate the depth of the story.