BEANS, the 15-year-old beagle, is back home with her family after a double tick bite landed her in intensive care for a week.
It was a harrowing experience for owner Colleen Bichel, who rushed her beloved beagle to the Tanawha-based emergency hospital after finding a tick on Beans’s neck.
“When I found the tick on Beans, she was already vomiting and having trouble walking. I got to the Tanawha clinic within 30 minutes and she was already a lot sicker by then,” Colleen said.
Although treatment was started straight away, Beans was already having respiratory difficulty and, in consultation with Ms Bichel, the decision was made to put her on life-saving mechanical ventilation.
Sunshine Coast AES director Dr Matt Rosen said in tick cases, one of the major issues for animals was respiratory failure and in advanced cases life support was needed.
“Beans required 24-hour intensive care; she was put into an induced coma and connected to a ventilator,” he said.
“Beans is definitely a fighter, because a second tick was found by our staff while she was in hospital.
“That hampered her recovery time a little; she required further ventilation but Colleen was absolutely super throughout it all.”
Dr Rosen said it was because of cases like Beans that he and his fellow AES directors made the decision to expand their services to include a second Sunshine Coast Emergency practice at Noosa, which opens its doors for the first time today (1 October).
“AES has been in existence for 10 years. We expanded our services to the Sunshine Coast in February 2014 because we wanted to provide essential emergency and critical care medicine to the entire south east coast of Queensland, based on the successful format of our other two practices at Underwood and the Gold Coast,” Dr Rosen said.
Noosa Animal Emergency Service is located at 43 Rene Street Noosaville and from 1 October, will open every weeknight from 5.30pm to 8am and 24 hours over the weekend – from 5.30pm Friday night until 8am Monday morning, as well as every public holiday. Phone 5430 6900 for more information.
