Where do I start........

I dont even know where to begin....

Chico our beautiful puppy, (ok she was not a puppy she was nearly 8 years old), as you know passed away in surgery 10 days ago. It was heartbreaking and we could not understand how a routine surgery could have turned out this way. Remember this surgery was done in Hamilton as he was suppose to be the best vet and it was going to cost about the $4000 mark, so it was not something we just did, a lot of research went into this choice. This is what she was going to have done.... This vet invented this type of surgery for cranial cruciate ligament damage.

The vet offered to pay for an autopsy and we thought yes at the time, as we were hoping for answers, this all happened the day of the surgery so we were very emotional. This in turn meant we couldn't bring her home as a 'whole', as she would had been in a biosecurity area, the only option was to get her cremated, which is what we had planned, though we had talked about her coming home just to say goodbye, but that was not to be.   

So over the next few days, as we waited for the autopsy results, and her ashes, I was researching as much as I could about what could have gone wrong. 6 days later we get a phone call for the area manager from the vet place (he is the area manger from Auckland and Waikato and possibly the North Island), anyway the first words out of his mouth was "I am so sorry to have to make this call....", we were thinking what else could go wrong she had already passed.... but what he was about to tell us was in some ways even worse..... at the biosecurity place where they did the autopsy, Chico got put in the wrong coloured bag and got thrown out with the garbage, rather than the correct bag, waiting for pick up to be cremated. We just couldn't believe what had just been said..... we are not sure if the vet instructions were given wrong, or the laboratory stuffed it up. What was keeping us going was that we thought she was going to be coming home....... 

This brings us on to the next thing.... when they did the autopsy, they kept her heart out and part of her spleen, kidney, liver and some faeces which was going to have a more histology report done on them. We are still waiting on these results, well apparently they have been sent to our local vet, but we are waiting to meet up and talk it all through. Because they kept the heart out, we were able to get that cremated 75 grams worth of Chico - it is so unfair.

The final straw for us, was when her cremation got stuffed up. I keep having horror thoughts of how she would have been treated after the autopsy, just been shoved in a bag, and thrown in the garbage with all the other crap. 

Anyway onto the results etc, first off her surgery had been completed and they were just a few minutes from waking her up, they were taking her for the final x-ray to check that the surgery all looked good. After hours and hours of research, scholarly articles etc.... it looks like it was an unnecessary death, this is yet to be confirmed but speaking to other people, it looks like the surgical team did not monitor her breathing properly, which caused the lungs to collapse and her heart to stop. 

We are going to have a meeting with the manager that rang us with the news of the cremation, he is coming to see us - once we have all the results in. They have waived all the fee's, including the cremation of the heart.... and also sent us a huge bunch of flowers - damage control yes I believe so. We finally got her harness/strap/blanket and toy back yesterday, we wanted it back sooner, so Rusty could smell her and us as well. It no longer smelt of Chico, though Rusty could still smell her. What happens from here will all depend on what happens at the meeting, the best we can ask for is for them to say they stuffed up, will they? have no idea at this stage... will keep you updated on that one, and we want answers of who stuffed up the cremation.

Rest in Peace Miss Chico Chops - our beautiful gorgeous puppy, you are so missed by all of us, and we feel so bad this happened, we tried to do what we thought was best for you.... but failed.