After being sad about Lucy's state yesterday, I decided to start making it better. What were things to cease the "shut down"?, I wondered. We went through the Chic-Fil-A drive thru. Lucy picked her head up and ate some chicken nuggets. We rode around in a shopping cart, just like "old times". I bought her a new harness and a little coat at Petco. When we got back home, I put the harness on her, and made her go for a walk. She was terrified and hated it. I pulled her along, one teeny step at a time. We made it to the stop sign near our house and then returned home. What was once was a five minute walk, took over twenty. But we did it. We have practiced walking about inside, from the front door to her dog bed. We keep practicing walking. She is made to walk herself to the food bowl, where she will now eat. She can't remember any of the routes that we have practiced. But the good new is that she has ceased the shut down.
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Lucy has had her second eye sewn shut, so she is in facto totally blind for now. She will have both eyes unsewn in three weeks. There is a little hope for her right eye to retain some vision, but we are proceeding as if her blindness is permanent. Yesterday, I took Lucy to her regular vet. I updated her on Lucy's double melting eye ulcers. I told her that I had worries about Lucy's anxiety meds. That a loss of appetite, foggy mild, wobbly walk, mental shutdown with lethargy might be a side effect of medication. Also, I was worried about the bigger problem. Lucy can't fight infection. She's had a chest cold as long as we've had her. Two eye infections was just not normal either. The vet thought that all of this was caused by one thing, and is indeed one problem. When she was infested with fleas earlier this year, she may have contracted Bartonella. We are doing a blood test for the Bartonella bacteria, and will know more on Monday.
Lucy had totally shut down. No eating, no drinking, she wouldn't even pick her head up. She refused to walk; instead she just curled up and quivered (also a Bartonella symptom). Lucy's behavior this week has been upsetting. She has intense fear. She won’t walk, eat, drink or go to the bathroom without extensive encouragement. I took this video to show our vet at our upcoming vet visit. If you look closely, you can see her shaking, probably from fear. Shortly after taking this video, I figured out what's wrong. Lucy has gone totally blind. We rushed her back to the Eye surgeon. She has a melting ulcer in both eyes now. She has, emotionally, reacted poorly-like we all would, I suppose. We are treating both eyes, giving her the best of care. During this time we also determined that she has very low hearing and does not respond to verbal cues. We are devestated, and expect her blindness to be permanent.
Thankfully, today is my day off from work. I am giving Lucy some TLC. She has the shakes and is agitated, both probably from pain. Molly really wants to help, and I need to keep them apart or supervised. Molly will lick Lucy's eye, trying to make her feel better. Lucy's stitches will be removed in 10 days and we will know then if this procedure preserved her eye.
Yesterday, when I returned home from work, Lucy's left eye had turned white and hazy. Today, I took her to the eye doctor. He said she had scratched it, gotten it infected and an ulcer had formed. Her steroid drops had aggravated the infection, too. She is on a new regimen to fight the infection. Dr Blair said this is a serious problem. It is weird how quickly this trouble set in. Just look at her shopping cart pictures from two days ago-things then were great. The complications regarding her eye surgery have been difficult. Today was a real downer. I'm sorry that I have so many posts regarding eyeball problems. Truth is, before we even started all of this, I hated eyeballs. I am squeamish regarding eyes and especially eye trauma. I don't like putting drops in any eyes. But I do it for my puppy. I love her. I have fought so hard to make her well. I want us to cross the finish line on all of this, give everyone involved a high five, and to just forget about eyeballs for a while. I wonder if Dr Blair, gets tired of eyeballs, too?
I have to admit, I'm getting tired. Lucy's post surgery medication schedule is complicated. Molly really wants to help with Lucy's recovery. I have needed to monitor the two of them together, or keep them separated. Molly doesn't understand that licking Lucy's eyes really isn't helpful. The good news is that Lucy is now sleeping through the night without trying to rub her eyes or take off her cone.
I knew Lucy hated being confined, so we practiced quite a bit with her playpen. All dog and cat owners should practice some crate training. Sooner or later they break a toe, need their teeth cleaned or have a medical reason for confinement. It is good to have crate experience before pets need medical confinement. I was happy to have Lucy's playpen objections out of the way before she came home with stitches yesterday. But the first night back from surgery was still terrible. Lucy, like all dogs, hates the E-collar. It took one entire day and night of agitation before she accepted the collar was here to stay. A great deal of effort was spent by making sure she didn't slam her head into something during her protests. I really wish we had tried some practice sessions wearing the cone. She tried overnight to head-butt the plastic collar off of her head. And I was up, too, telling her to, "Cut it out. You have stitches!" Lucy is taking a bunch of medicine for the next week or so. I have a pill organizer to help keep me straight, and to avoid the, "Did I already give you your morning pain pill?" guesswork. If I gave the the pill, it will not be in the caddy. In addition to her pills, she takes three different eye drops, on three different schedules. To keep my drop schedule straight, I put Post-Its on the fridge. There is one Post-It for each dose given during the day. The left side shows Post-Its for drops which still need to be administered. The right is where I put the Post-Its for drops that have been administered. I don't want to fiddle with learning a bunch of medication names. So the bottles are labeled 4x, 1x and 2x which correspond to the number of times that med needs to be given that day.
Lastly, For animals and peoples, when you undergo anesthesia, your gut takes a while before it gets back on track. It wakes up more slowly than other systems of the body. For the next few days, Lucy is eating meat based baby food and boiled rice while her digestive system recovers. Which she loves, too. The procedure was successful. Lucy was terribly groggy when I picked her up from her surgery. She was still sedated in the car. Once I set her down on the grass, it was a different story. Tomorrow is the big day. Lucy will have both cataracts removed from her eyes. If all goes well, she will arrive at the vet surgeon's office blind, but will go home being able to see. Part one of her procedure will be a retina test. If the retina is in good shape, the eye will receive a new lens and a cataract removal. The worst case scenario is that this eye work will actually detach the retina; which means instead of being rather blind, she will be totally blind. Instead of seeing some light and a little bit from the peripheral of her left eye, she might not see anything. If she does experience a detached retina in one eye, we hope she will regain clear vision in the other eye.
She is not risking very much-just her current pitiful sight, for the chance at clear vision. She recently has had dental surgery, so she should respond well to anesthesia. We made an extra effort to have an awesome weekend before her big day. We had a great time in Nelson County. When we are cooped up recovering for a while, we will be able to look back on eating hot dogs, riding in a pickup truck and smelling country smells. We'll post some more of our Nelson pictures soon. Lucy's anxiety was high when we first brought her into our home. She was torn between exploring and keeping up with everyone's location. I kept checking in with her, holding up Molly for her to sniff, then letting her go back to exploring. It has been really hard not coddling her as I watch her work through her anxiety.
Flip Flops have been helpful. She can tell where I am and how fast I am moving by the sound that they make as I walk. We have a designated route for exploring outside. Basically, we make counter clockwise circles around the house. She gained confidence quickly. She will wander away from the house and check things out, and then she knows to run to the left in order to proceed with our walk. While I quickly get bored with routine, the dogs we've had always enjoy it. This is probably even more true with deaf or blind dogs. Predictability is the mother of calm. |
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