A big-hearted dog who saved her owner from addiction has herself been given a second lease on life – this time by specialists in animal and human medicine who performed rare surgery to treat a condition almost unheard of in dogs.
Michonne, an 8-year-old female boxer from Dallas, underwent the life-saving surgery on Thursday at New York City’s Animal Medical Center with the help of doctors from Lenox Hill Hospital after her owner spent more than a year trying to pinpoint what ailed her.
“She’s everything I’ve needed in this season of my adult life,” said the dog’s 29-year-old owner Veronica McNatt. After leaving a halfway house she shared with 20 women, she knew that unless she was responsible for another living being, her life would once again be a mess. She wanted to care for an animal and started looking for her new best friend.
McNatt, a secretary at the Sojourn Church in Carrollton, Texas, fell in love with Michonne through a dog adoption app. The pooch had lived a life of neglect and abuse, kept in chains to breed. In spite of it, Michonne was a loving, markedly kind dog.
Michonne was perfect for McNatt, who adopted her in 2017. But it wasn’t long before the dog became ill. For a year and a half McNatt searched for a diagnosis and treatment as a growth appeared on Michonne’s neck and kept getting bigger, she had difficulty breathing, severe coughing, and dizziness. One night, a coughing fit was marked by blood.
Before she was sick, Michonne would “throw things in the air, jump on people, and play bark like she’s gonna get you,” McNatt said.
Now the dog’s eyelids were so swollen she couldn’t see. She had a hard time swallowing and began having seizures and severe headaches. To relieve the pressure, Michonne would press her head against McNatt. If she wasn’t around, the dog would press her head against anything to try to ease the pain.
McNatt finally drove Michonne three hours from their Dallas home to Texas A&M Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital. There, vets discovered that the growth wasn’t cancer but a swelling blood vessel. They referred McNatt to New York’s Animal Medical Center and veterinarian Chick Weisse.
Michonne was suffering from a rare genetic condition called arteriovenous malformation (AVM) – abnormal blood vessels connecting arteries and veins in the brain that disrupt the flow of blood and oxygen. Without surgery, the vessels could rupture and bleed into her brain. Weisse said the condition is rare in animals and almost unheard of in dogs.
On Thursday, two specialists from Lenox Hill Hospital – Dr. Rafael Ortiz, chief of neuro-endovascular surgery and interventional neuro-radiology, and Dr. Robert Rosen, a vascular and interventional radiologist, huddled over Michonne at the Animal Medical Center with Dr. Weisse.
Ortiz said the team would insert a thin catheter into Michonne’s groin to access one of the arteries feeding the AVM, navigating to the brain using X-ray imaging. The aim: to use specially made metallic liquid or “glue” on one of the arteries to seal it and reduce some of the blood flowing to the AVM.
Weisse explained that “the glue … will harden as soon as it touches blood. You dilute the glue so it doesn’t harden too quickly or harden too slowly.”
Specialists in treating human illness were brought in because “once we get above the heart, you need extra training,” Weisse explained. “You have to really know your anatomy very well here because if you inject, it could go up to the retina, it could go to the brain, could go to the spinal cord, and that’s really the biggest risk of this,” he said, explaining to care needed to avoid blindness and paralysis.
“We have the expertise to treat this because of our experience treating human patients,” said Ortiz. “We’re very optimistic. We expect that in the next couple days, Michonne will start improving. We’ll see that they get back to normal within a couple of weeks after the treatment,”
By early afternoon, after two-and-a-half hours, Weiss told McNatt that the surgery had been a success. They hugged.
“The fact that we had a neuro interventionist made it incredibly safe. But if we tried this without such a specially trained doctor, it would be very dangerous,” Weisse explained. “Because it was so rarely done in animals, we didn’t really know the risk.”
“If Michonne didn’t have this done, she would have progressively deteriorated and probably been euthanized,” he said.
Weisse said the surgery was supported by research funds andthe doctors donated their time. “Typically, the surgery would cost $6,000 and she paid $2,500.”
“To me she’s worth it, to give her a fighting chance after everything she’s been through. I’m not going to give up on her like the people did before,” McNatt said.
