Sweet little Shona has had quite a year at the practice! She is a 10 ½ year old Jack Russell Terrier and she first came to us in April this year with intermittent vomiting. With initial treatment she got better within a few days, however it kept on recurring despite medical treatment. Shona was still her bright and happy self, but the problem just kept coming back! Her blood tests were all normal, so she had an abdominal ultrasound scan with our visiting specialist to try and get to the bottom of the issue.
This scan showed that her stomach wall was really inflamed and thickened, so we were worried there was a nasty underlying process as she is getting a little bit older. Shona was then booked in for an endoscopy to look inside her stomach. This is where a small camera is passed down the throat into the stomach so we can physically check the stomach lining and contents, and take samples if required.
In Shona’s stomach we found lots of pieces of hard yellow plastic! They must have been sitting there a long time to be causing all that inflammation. The plastic hadn’t been visible on the ultrasound. Unfortunately, the pieces were too big and sharp to be removed using the endoscope so poor Shona had to have abdominal surgery to find and remove them. Happily, the surgery went very well and Shona made a full recovery. She was discharged 2 days later, feeling much better now that the plastic was gone.
All was going well at home when 2 months later she vomited again; Shona loves to eat things she shouldn’t and her worried owner thought she may have got hold of some more plastic. Shona had another scan which was suspicious for another foreign object in the stomach! She had another endoscopy and we all kept our fingers crossed that this time we could avoid surgery. She did have plastic in there again! Luckily this time the plastic in the stomach was softer and smaller; we were able to pull it all out using the endoscope, and surgery was not needed. Shona was able to go home the very same day. She is now back to her normal life…although she is not allowed near anything plastic!
