OK, so…I was out of town two weekends ago. On Sat. the 18th, Mr. Punky called and said Sadie didn’t look good. He didn’t know what was wrong, but he put her in a crate of her own with a bowl of water and called to let me know. I got back Monday night the 20th, and she didn’t look good, although Mr. Punky said she looked better than she did on Saturday. I decided to take her back to the U of Mn. Vet School (she got a complete blood work up for her Cushings at the end of August, and they said she looked great) and see if this was somehow related to her Cushing’s or her meds or something.
Her “assigned” vet wasn’t seeing dogs on Tuesday the 21st, so she went to the Emergency room. The vet there said that the diagnosis was “punkiness,” (appropriate, no?) which I think is defined as “she doesn’t look good,” which is what I said to begin with. She was very dehydrated and had a limp in her front right leg. They drew blood, were unable to get a urine sample, and had the orthopedic guy look at her leg. (No obvious reason for limping, some arthritis in both elbows, must have injured herself somehow.) That night, the Dr. called and said her blood work was a
little off, but in subtle ways, and they wondered when she last had a heartworm check and if she was on preventative (10/21/03 and sort of, as in she gets it more months than not, respectively.)
But we see that I am unworthy to be Sadie’s primary caregiver, because I never did get back to the vet about this, or try to do any follow up. This despite the fact that she wandered about disconsolately, had trouble with steps, ran into things, would go outside and just stand there, staring blankly, and otherwise tried to let me know that I wasn’t doing my part.
The final straw was Wed. night. I let Sadie sleep on the couch (warm, comfy, out of range of the other dogs) while I ran around doing a Crisis Cleaning before the arrival of guests. (But, thanks to FlyLady, everything had been clean recently and I was just sweeping the floor and cleaning the kitchen and such.) Then I heard an odd noise, and came into the living room just in time to see Sadie depositing diarrhea on the cushion. She stood there a bit, gazing off into space, then moved forward onto the other cushion, squatted, and piddled about a gallon and a half.
Thus we see that I am doubly unworthy to be Sadie’s primary caregiver, because instead of flying to her side with soothing words of comfort and various sweetmeats, I was thinking “)(F$&(*(^^#%^%^&^/!! I have guests arriving in 5 minutes! What am I supposed to do?” (I ended up hiding the cushions on the back porch, vacuuming the frame, draping the whole thing with a quilt and passing it off as a Bad Decorating Idea.)
There matters rested until yesterday morning. I can’t swear to what happened, because I was out of the room, wrestling The Punkylette into long-sleeved clothes. (She was determined to wear her pink-net-and-sequins Cinderella princess dress and a Burger King crown to school, and on a warmer day and in a different mood I might have
thought, “Sure, why not?” but since it was actually cold out this morning I wanted something more substantial.) But I think that Maui jumped from floor to chair to table, and then grabbed a bag of chocolate covered raisins and threw them down, and then Mambo pounced on the bag and ran off with it. In any case, by the time I got there, carnage had ensued.
So I called my vet, who said that I should induce vomiting. So I took both dogs and a box of kosher salt out back, and proceeded to administer the stuff. They didn’t like it, and I wrestled with them, and they snapped at me, and escaped and ran away, and I poured granulated salt, and thick watery salt sludge, and very, very salty water down their throats and noses and all over their coats, and they drooled heavy white slime and periodically coughed up foaming masses of white goo, but no chocolate. Then I looked up, and The Punkylette was standing at the screen door, tears pouring down her face, looking horrified, and when she saw me looking at her she called out, “I’m a good girl, Mama! They’re bad, but I’m good!” So I went back in, called the vet, told
them that I couldn’t induce vomiting and that I was bringing Sadie in too, as she didn’t look good.
Maui had the good sense to gakk all over the waiting room, so he got to come home. Mambo just looked confused, so he got to go sit in a crate so they could induce vomiting and make sure he didn’t show signs of a toxic reaction. Sadie urinated copiously on the floor in the waiting room and the exam room, and stared at the walls.
The vet listened to everything I said about Sadie, and told me that dementia is a side-effect of Cushings, and it sounded like that was what we were dealing with. It also sounded like plenty of water was going in, so it wasn’t that end of the system that was dehydrating her, but kidney problems were a known side-effect of Cushings. She had no idea why the vet school asked about heartworms, but she would call them
and find out. So I left Sadie with them to see if they could get a urine sample and went home.
The vet called me later to say that Sadie’s urine sample was pretty bad. Her Ph is very high, and there were both crystals and white blood cells in the urine. So she is on an antibiotic for that. She also got hold of the vet school. (I can’t remember what the chemical/substance/whatever is, so let’s call it X.) The X value in blood is usually elevated only in the presence of parasites, and is usually very low with Cushings. Sadie’s X value is very high, which doubly worried them. So they took a stool sample to check for parasites and I am to be very diligent about giving those heartworm
pills every month, without fail.
On the plus side, all of Sadie’s dementia-like symptoms could be from the infection.