Month: March 2011

Categories
Dogs Hemophilia

Darth Vader and Toy Poodles

Our dog went from bad to worse in the past week.  He kept the cycle of feeling good, then getting worse.  This time around, from his constant pain, he was making these whining, groaning noises from his throat.  This progressively got worse and worse to the point that we brought him back to the internet medicine vet and they did an endoscopy on his throat to discover a severe hematoma and bleeding near his larynx. It was very bad, much worse than I thought.  He had increasingly started to sound like Darth Vader in his breathing, but what I never thought about what that his airway would swell up and restrict it.  This is what was happening.  If we had no scheduled this check-up and went with the endoscopy, it would have been around 48 hours or so that his airway would have been restricted and he suffocated.

After the endoscopy they immediately started giving him blood plasma to increase the clotting factor and get him to heal.  We went with the doctors recommendation of one bag of plasma for the transfusion.  It’s not cheap and we’ve quickly exhausted the funds for his care already. In an fortunate yet unfortunate turn of events, a toy poodle had come in during the evening with an emergency that required it needed plasma as well. However, it being so small, it didn’t need the entire bag of plasma so it was donated to Cobars recovery.  The blood transfusion was successful, in the terms that it did not create more problems and he is, slowly recovering from this severe internal bleeding event.

We don’t know yet if there will be long term issues, but I some how doubt it.  He is eating properly now as well.  It’s all around a good thing. There’s quite a bit of stress lifted from us.  There is still a good 2 week window of healing.  So that is the latest update.

 

Categories
Dogs

It’s Good, It’s Bad

The day I posted the previous article about our dog, I learned that he has Giardia.  This would explain a lot of his problems.  He was put on two different types of meds to get rid of the parasite and he was doing fairly well until this weekend.  Some minor, yet consistent vomiting started up.  Gave him some Ace and other pills and that was able to get him through the night without vomiting.  This morning he seems to be doing better, but I think that is still up in the air a bit.  Will continue to post articles about once a week as updates to his health.

Categories
Dogs

I feel like number one, yet I am the last in line

Ugh.  Sometimes it just never ends it seems.  Yet, I fear the ending. Or at least, the worse case scenario.  I always preach to not succumb to the fear of loss, yet I seem to fail myself.

And yes, this post is about our dog Cobar.

He recovered from his illness in January and was doing good up until about two weeks ago as of this post.  He started acting a bit weird and he started urinating blood.  That was a very very bad sign.  Bleeding of any kind, especially internally is just really bad.  Of course, this was on a weekend so a trip to the Vet Hospital was in order as the normal vet practice is closed.  They did a very good job of looking him over and determined he got a UTI. Which was a bit odd.  Over the course of about five days he started to improve, and for the most part he had improved, except he was urinating a bit more than normal.  Instead of just peeing once he would pee two, maybe three times.  I was beginning to worry that this was more than a UTI. Possibly issues with his kidneys.

Then comes the record low temperatures.  When it gets cold out, you can get dehydrated quickly.  A week into his recovery he became very stiff and limping which we finally realized that he was severely dehydrated.  More than we had thought, most likely due to this cold weather. So we whipped up some soupy canned food for him which is loved and chomped down.  Getting some good food and hydrated well.

Of course, thats when the nightmare starts.  His diarrhea started several hours after eating and just continued on into the night.  After awhile there was nothing to come out but he was clearly straining to push something out.  He was beginning to show signs of something like a kidney stone.  Very similar to what happens to me, except, I tend to projectile vomit, and fortunately he never got to that stage.  He started to refuse any food or water, so we were forced to hydrate him using a 3ml syringe and just squirting water into his mouth on a regular basis.  We created a solution of Vitamin Water and regular water.  This proved to be a good thing.

Of course this was over the weekend.  We thought this might be a continuation of what was wrong with him last week, but it did seem different.  He’s not repeatedly trying to pee. It snowed, so we can immediately see if there was blood in his urine.  But there seemed to be a great effort in straining to go.

So, hydrating him every 2 hours of 9ml’s of Vitamin Water/Water solution and a vet visit for Monday.  He’s doing good, Monday, but clearly in a lot of pain when the pain meds wear off.  He’s still also on his anti-biotic.  So, in the afternoon my wife takes him off to the vet.  I finally get some time alone from this ordeal.

Could it get worse? Of course!  His blood work comes back good.  He’s hydrated fairly well (only 6%-8% dehydrated). Our hydration was working and was probably a very good thing. But why the straining of trying to poop?  His prostrate appears to be swollen (enlarged).  Great.  It could be abscessed or worst case scenario, cancer.

So now he is on some heavy sedation, a stronger anti-biotic and an appetite drug to give him an appetite.

And I am about 80% complete with his web site. I’ve been drained physically and mentally to want to mess with it more.

What next? I can’t go farther back in the line when I am the last one.