Recently my second corgi pup Wonton, who had just turned one year old, decided to be way too curious about life and chewed up 80% of our rubber door stopper. I was super surprised as I thought she was chewing on what was left of a goat horn that she had been working on the last few days. I was appalled when I saw how much of it chewed. Immediately I swiped it away from her and called around for the nearest available emergency vet to seek help.
I didn’t process how I felt at the moment and went into “mom” mode, just getting things done as efficiently as possible. I called my husband and asked him to meet us at the vet’s, packed up what was left of her door stopper, and made sure I had copies of her latest vaccination records. I did my best to regulate my emotions to not pass on my nervous energy to her because God knows, I was worried about how much her tiny stomach could handle!
How I Applied Reiki On My Dog Before Surgery
I consulted my mentor who mentioned that if she chewed the rubber door stopper into small pieces I shouldn’t be too worried about it and she could potentially poop it all out, but if I was really worried I should take her to the vet. However, it was because of what he mentioned, that it dawned on me. That mischievous corgi girl probably did not chew it in small pieces. If anything, she probably swallowed sizeable chunks of it. Alright, emergency vet visit it really is. Sigh.
Within 43 minutes after discovering her newfound chewing adventure, we arrived at the animal hospital as their only available appointment was then. Along the way, she had a nice, healthy bowel movement. She was in great spirits, as high energy as usual, and probably thought she was cooler than her older sister Dumpling because she got to go on a night walk with her mama without her sister. Little did she know what was coming, and me too for that matter.
I had walked into the emergency animal hospital with the idea of inducing vomiting as that would be the quickest, most efficient way to remove the rubber pieces from her stomach ASAP. I knew I had a small window to get induced vomiting done before the rubber pieces would travel to her intestines, which would potentially cause intestinal obstruction, something definitely I wanted to prevent. The nurse took her back for an x-ray and then brought us to a nice room to set her up for induced vomiting. Within minutes she started hurling.
Chunks and chunks of rubber had come out, thank god. But it broke my heart to see the little babe throwing up six, seven times within a fifteen-minute period. She went from a very content state to full-on exhaustion within this short frame of time. I sat on the floor with her and started to give her Animal Reiki, sending her as much healing energy as possible while waiting for the vet to have his consultation with us. I thought that would be it, but the vet had suggested taking a second x-ray to see if there was any leftover rubber in her stomach so we agreed to it and found that she had vomited 90 something percent of the rubber out, however, there was still a piece of rubber big enough that it showed up on the x-ray but it also wasn’t massive. It was lodged in the bottom of her stomach. Now I’m not sure if scare tactics are commonly used but man, this vet on the night shift was really good at laying out the consequences of not taking care of the rest of the issue immediately. I was ready to take Wonton home, thinking she could probably move the remaining bit of rubber left through a bowel movement, but just when I had begun to ask if that was an option, the vet immediately took his hands off the table and said if that’s the route we’re choosing then we will need to sign a waiver, waiving him and the hospital of any responsibilities from that moment onwards in case an intestinal obstruction occurs or anything worse happens. Well, then I thought, if you put it THAT way, then yes, I want to know what our options are here. We were seeing a professional for a reason.
He said either we take her home for monitoring and sign a waiver as I had thought, or keep her at the vet’s overnight for monitoring, but both choices would mean we’re taking a bet on intestinal obstruction issues or worst. The third option, which is the one he insisted was the best and safest option and his recommendation was to perform an endoscopy and see if the last piece of rubber could be extracted BUT if it can’t be, we need to give him consent to perform stomach surgery immediately. Then just when I was able to ask if an endoscopy could be done as a standalone procedure (I was more comfortable with this because it’s still non-invasive), he read my mind and said, “I will not perform an endoscopy if you don’t give me consent as well to do doing surgery if necessary.” I wanted to ask what was deemed “necessary” but he was being paged by a nurse to see a cat in critical condition so we literally had two minutes to discuss before he had to go. At that point, I looked at my husband to review our options and it didn’t seem like we had much of an option at that moment so we went the endoscopy route and she had to stay overnight at the animal hospital.
How I Applied Reiki On My Dog After Surgery
Once we got home, Wonton’s sister, Dumpling, was so worried as she didn’t see Wonton come home. So once I settled down, I sent Distant Reiki to Wonton to heal her entire condition whilst sending Reiki to everyone involved in taking care of her at the hospital, and then sent Reiki to Dumpling to alleviate her worries. By then I had some quiet time and couldn’t help blaming myself, feeling overwhelmed, guilty, and doubting myself – wondering if we made the right call.
Around 2:00 am the nurse called and said the endoscopy was unsuccessful. Her stomach was clear and they thought the rubber must be in her intestines already so they said they were going into surgery and asked me again for consent. I said they already took our consent as we had to sign a bunch of paperwork to facilitate the process so why did she ask for my verbal consent again? She didn’t answer my question but just said “Okay thanks.” and hung up. I was up for the rest of the night waiting for their update and decided to send more Distant Reiki to Wonton for her surgery.
At 7:00 am they called and said they had performed the surgery earlier in the night but didn’t have a chance to update me sooner. The surgery was unsuccessful as they couldn’t locate the piece of rubber and they needed to keep her at the animal hospital for a few nights for monitoring, hoping that she would move the rest of the rubber piece out via pooping (so I guess my initial idea wasn’t so bad after all?) They said they would send me WhatsApp messages with updates, photos, and videos of her in her condition as they couldn’t allow visits due to COVID-19 restrictions. I asked if they could send me a picture of her incision so I could get an idea of where it was so I could focus on sending Distant Reiki to that particular area, but they must have been too busy and forgot to. It didn’t matter too much as I was sending her Distant Animal Reiki to her entire body anyway but it would’ve been helpful for reference.
To be honest, my head wasn’t in the clearest state anymore but I had felt like the details of her endoscopy and surgery were quite ambiguous. I wanted to understand her situation better. What does “unsuccessful” mean? And I couldn’t help thinking in my head, well if we’re just waiting for her to move her bowels, why can’t I just bring her home in a much more familiar and comfortable environment to do so instead of being stuck in a cage?
Now, I’m a very lucky person because I know one of the best animal communicators in the world who can provide very accurate simultaneous translation, something quite unheard of in the animal communication field of work. I immediately messaged her to see if she could fit me in for a quick session with Wonton. I wanted to hear from her directly about how she is and let her know what needs to be done for her to feel better and come home. I know animal communication seems even more out there than Animal Reiki but really, we live in evolving times. I’ve sent multiple pet owners to this amazing woman and every single one of them was so happy and relieved that they found a way to communicate with their pets more clearly than ever. Wonton had shared how much pain she is in, and how rough she found the nurses treating her which made her feel even more pain. I told her that the vet wanted her to move her bowels and the sooner she did, the sooner she could go home. She said, “Mommy, I’ll try but I’m so scared, in so much pain right now and I’m so tired I just want to sleep.”
So I called the vet and insisted that I bring her home.
Interestingly, the vet agreed that she could be released when I picked her up (20 hours after walking in there with Wonton). The surgeon who had operated on her happened to be at the hospital and met with us. He explained that two very strange turns of events happened during that night. The first is while he was doing the endoscopy, he felt Wonton’s body allowed him to safely move through the stomach into the end of the small intestine (usually it stops around the stomach or the very beginning of the small intestine, but for some “odd reason” he was able to move a lot further.
He said the second “miracle” as he called it, was that the piece of rubber had passed through Wonton’s stomach to the colon within 1-2 hours, which is extremely, extremely rare for it to pass through that quickly and safely. I asked him what time he performed the endoscopy and surgery and he had said around 2:30am-roughly 4:00 am. I had been sending Distant Reiki to Wonton from 11:30pm-1:30am, then again from 2:15 am (after they called) until a little past 4:00 am. Coincidence? Sure. But I knew and have seen many times how mind-blowing the results of Reiki can be, especially during desperate times so I wasn’t surprised at all when he told us about these extreme rarities. I know they were the incredible results of Reiki or rather Distant Reiki in this case.
Unfortunately for Wonton at that hour of the night, the surgeon had decided to open her up as a precaution anyway and indeed see that the piece of rubber had moved into her colon. He decided not to mess with it and instead let it pass through her naturally, and because of this, he felt comfortable sending her home earlier than expected. The poor little babe had gone through so much not to even have the last piece we’ve been looking for removed.
To be honest, I was quite shocked at first when we picked up Wonton because I saw that they had cut her open from her stomach to her pelvis, much, much larger of an incision than what I thought would be a 3-4 inch opening around her stomach. We had given consent to stomach surgery but didn’t realize they would cut so far down. Regardless, given the time and place, the team that took care of Wonton had done everything by the book.
But I wish we handled things a lot differently. I wished I listened to my gut more instead of letting fear cloud my judgment. I was in what I call “go mode” where you run with your head, on logic rather than stepping back to see and feel the picture more clearly. So I wished I had more details to make better decisions. I wished we asked for more time to decide when the vet was being paged away. In hindsight, maybe we could’ve asked him to tend to the cat in the next room in her critical decision and we would get back to him in 10-15 minutes or so. I don’t know if that could have been an option, but it wouldn’t have hurt to ask. We should have just induced vomiting and taken her home. But honestly, we failed and let stress get the better of us and it was a big lesson.
I’m sure some of you who have been in the same position, are being faced with making big medical decisions for a family member or pet of which you may not be the expert. It’s quite a daunting moment in your life. It’s hard not to feel fear, the weight, the responsibility of making such a decision for another living being with the clock ticking away.
Lesson learned. Listen, get the full picture and ultimately trust yourself to see what’s the right move. Step back, give yourself even a minute or two to think more clearly. Get second, third, and fourth opinions if available and time allows for it. Create a go-to game plan for how to manage fear during stressful situations just as you would with resetting your diet after eating a lot of junk. For me, I consulted our regular vet whom we love and adore for a second opinion after she reviewed the medical records from the emergency animal hospital to get a better grasp of what happened and what we should do in the future if we run into an incident like this again (which of course, we hope and will even more diligent to prevent it from ever happening again!) but should a friend’s pet go through something similar, we’d have some insights to share.
It’s been just over two weeks since this incident took place. Her incision was very deep, much deeper than when she was spayed. Her immune system became very weak and she developed a very nasty ear infection, and skin infections and had rounds of diarrhea, and vomited twice. We took her back to our regular vet days after her surgery to check in and luckily the piece of rubber is completely clear from her x-rays, it has finally left her body!
Conclusion
Wonton is healing beautifully and has been enjoying Animal Reiki nightly since she’s been home. She’s been spoiled and snugs up to me, nudging my hands with her nose to ask me to place my hands on her for some hands-on healing and within minutes she falls asleep. She’s taken to Reiki quite well, to say the least! It’s hilarious, but it has turned into many beautiful bonding moments. I’m keen to see if Animal Reiki stays as a nightly ritual even after she’s 100% better. It sure has for years for her sister, Dumpling who discovered Animal Reiki years before and has been loving her Reiki treatments right before bedtime.
I’ve also done a few Intuitive Healing sessions with myself and my husband to heal and release those emotions we felt (namely self-directed blame, guilt, shame, self-doubt, nervousness, stress, and anger) so we don’t bottle those emotions from this incident in.
Anyone can learn Reiki (level one) and apply hands-on healing for their loved one – human or pet. It’s not something you have to be naturally talented in. Learn more about how you can spoil yourself or your loved one through basic Reiki training, a wonderful tool you’ll have for the rest of your life.
