BirthdaySuit Neala Gotta Have Faith
Neala was born on April 27th, 201... She was a hefty kitten, weighing 101 grams at birth...
She grew rapidly, apparently a fat, sassy hairless kitten... Everything appeared to be fine...
Towards five weeks of age, when we started weaning Neala onto solid foods, we noticed her eating rapidly, as most kittens do, and then immediately regurgitating her food- which was unusual.
We, at first, assumed she was eating her food too quickly, but as time passed and she repeatedly regurgitated her food, we knew something was truly wrong...
At almost 8 weeks of age, we took her into our vet, the wonderful Dr Willey at Desert Inn Animal Hospital, located in Las Vegas, Nevada. After a series of barium xrays, we learned that Neala had something called 'Persistent Right Aortic Arch'- something that occured during embryonic growth and basically restricted all solid food from reaching her stomach.
Click LINK for more info on PRAA...
Surgery to correct PRAA in our locality was quoted at $5000-$6000.
After more then one person recommended we open a Paypal donations account for Neala, we took their advice in hand and started this site as well as Neala's blog. This site began with this page and Neala's blog. Within days, donations came in from friends and from friends of friends and even from complete strangers. People from every walk of life donated.
During this time, we also received an influx of suggestions from people all over the United States. We called surgical centers from Florida to Michigan to UC Davis, in California, looking for an affordable surgeon.
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We finally were led to one in Salt Lake City, Utah. Dr Morgan of the Veterinarian Specialty Center of Utah.
Since time was of an essence, because the longer Neala's esophagus was forced to try to push food down the stricture caused by her PRAA, the higher chance of permanent nerve damage and her suffering from megaesophagus for the rest of her life, we drove down to SLC and had the surgery one week from the day we opened her site for donations.
Neala survived her surgery performed on June 30th, 2010, but due to complications from being fed the wrong diet while at the vet hospital, she succumbed to respiratory distress and passed away on July 1, 2010. Our hearts are broken over the passing over this little girl...
We will keep this site up to date and hope to create a site with information in regard to Persistent Right Aortic Arch, recovery from surgery for it, and stories about other animals who have suffered from this condition. We hope others will find it useful in their time of need.
We will also create a webpage about starting donation drives for pets online. Every day, people are forced to make life and death situations for their pets and perhaps this new webpage will help them. We will cover what information we think is pertinent to post, where to post it, and how to ensure to the public that you are not running a scam.
We thank you and Neala thanks you...
Click here for Neala's OWN blog!
Read Neala's blog to follow her story from her diagnosis through her surgery...
Sneak Peek at Sphynx Portrait Auction...
