Butter continues to struggle

Sad news: Butter lost the eye we had performed surgery on 2 times to try to save it from the severe ulceration he had which was not responsive to topical medicine & progressed to the last possible layer of tissue just before rupture.

We had to enucleate his eye on Wed, 4/8/09. The conjunctival graft was healing perfectly but the eye suffered too much trauma, developed glaucoma and was no longer visual. The pressure in that eye was soaring higher by the hour.

Even more so, his remaining eye (which had a superficial ulcer but was originally healing) ruptured that morning and then 3 more times that same night. We rushed to the AMC emergency medical center but were not able to receive care on site. We were beyond lucky that Yasmin who has been working with us on Dr. van der Woerdt's team - was there to help. She helped contact every possible opthomologist in the tri-state area and was prepared TO FLY to North Carolina to help Butter.

Yasmin was able to reach Dr. La Croix of the VMCLI who was on call and came in from home to see Butter. We hopped in Yasmin's car and were in West Islip in the middle of the night.

While performing surgery on the newly ruptured eye, Dr.'s enucleated the other eye suffering from glaucoma. For the surgery on the remaining eye, Dr. La Croix chose to perform a corneal conjunctival graft where she plugged the ruptured site with a piece of his cornea. This is a more aggressive form of graft. He has pulled through his 3rd surgery succesfully...and now we wait. We are doing everything we possibly can to try and retain some vision for this amazing little 14 week old puppy.

More to come when he comes home from the hospital....Please send some good thoughts out for Butter. As always your donations are unbelievably appreciated!