More To The Story

Last week I posted about a "spat" that Scooter and Casey got into in the wee hours of the morning.  I thought it was about a "sockie" that Scooter was being overly protective of.  Turns out there was more to the story. 

We noticed that during the days following Scooter was slowly refusing food.   Sometimes he would eat.  And if he did eat, it wasn't very much.  He went out for walks with me every morning, but at other times seemed to just want to lay around.  "Oooo....There's a bunny!"  Off like a shot.  Other times, no interest.  Very puzzling behavior.

Then this week we had a few days where I don't think he was drinking much.  I inspected is gums and noticed both his gums and tongue were pale.  I told SM to take him to the vets as I was becoming concerned about dehydration.  SM and I both suspected a mouth sensitivity issue like a bad tooth.  Turns out, it was something much worse.

The Vet kept him all day Wed on an IV drip along with Dextrose.  Blood work was sent out.  The Vet felt his eyes and mouth were slightly jaundice and wanted to wait to see what the blood work said with results expected the next morning.  

I picked him up Wed night with a couple of cans of special dog food and instructions to bring him back the next morning for another IV and monitoring.  Wed night I watched him eat for the first time in days.  The drip had done him good, you could tell he was feeling better.

Thursday, back to the Vet.  I was preparing myself mentally to hear the worst.  Liver cancer.  (No, Thank goodness.)  Diagnosis?  AIHA or Auto Immune Hemolytic Anemia  Bad enough but not as bad as the thoughts I had dancing around in my head.

Fortunately the Vet feels we caught it early.  His liver panel is normal, no infection showing up either.  Scooter stayed at the Vets all day and was given large doses of cortisone.  He's also been placed on a large daily dose of Prednisone and Doxycycline.  I went ahead and also purchased Vet recommended soft food for now (low protein) and will slowly reintroduce dry food as he (hopefully) feels better. 

I've got a heavy surgery day Friday with post-ops on Saturday, so SM has elected to stay home with Scooter to monitor events.  Most dogs respond well to the Pred but we won't know much until another blood draw on Monday.  The Vet has explained that if we can get him through this initial "crisis" than the disease can likely be managed with lifelong meds.  But this will be a l-o-n-g drawn out process.  We haven't spoken about outcome.  We know it's way too early to start asking about that.

So when I got home last night I laughed when I looked at the kitchen counter.  2 meds for Scooter plus cans of dog food, 1 med for Kiki, 1 med for Ginny plus ear drops.  I told SM that we have more meds for our animals than we have for ourselves.

So here we go again...First KiKi's blindness and now Scooters issues.  They say things come in 3's.  Who's up next?