Maiya was so happy to be in the truck and could hardly sit still on the drive home. She finally sat down in the passenger seat and looked so proud. So proud that someone was able to see something different about her. After all, she was looked at by many different people over the two weeks in the shelter and no one was interested. Today was a special day for her.We get home and I am just dreading her reaction when we meet the first cat. Sunny always greets us at the door when we come in, and Sunny has zero fear of dogs so I knew Maiya would not discourage her from being there. We walk in, Sunny is there, Maiya sniffs her and walks off. All of this that I have been dreading was over in two seconds. Maiya was about as interested in cats as I am football. That's to say she was not interested at all! Haha.
Maiya explores her environment. She meets Bentley but growls a few times at Annabelle. At this point I'm not too worried but a bit concerned as to why she's doing this. As owners of multiple dogs we knew that dogs growl at each other so we still weren't so sure how to take it yet.
I started feeding her three times a day. Honestly, everything was pretty uneventful for a week. We get the test results back and she's negative for everything but her blood work was a mess. She was anemic, had extremely low protein and just about everything else was abnormal. Hmmm....maybe she was just starved. I mean after the week she had gained 2 lbs. so perhaps they just didn't feed her?
Well during this week I noticed she got the hiccups a lot. Hiccups are typically something only puppies get, but hiccups are not deadly so I just found it odd that she always seemed to have them. I also noticed that she "spit up" in her mouth a lot when she burped. Not huge amounts and not even enough to come out of her mouth, but it was like reflux or something. Also she constantly smacked her lips. Weird but again, not really discerning.
She started regurgitating one week after we brought her home. I thought it was vomiting at the time. I started thinking maybe IBD or some other gastro disease. I took her to the vet again and they ran more tests. Nothing conclusive.
There was mention of megaesophagus although the vet wasn't convinced this was the case, but we did an x-ray anyways. I have a feeling the vet that did the x-ray wasn't so sure what he was looking for because he said her esophagus was normal. We went on with further testing to no avail.
At this point she was constantly "throwing up" and I took her to the vet for the last time. I said run whatever tests you need to run. Don't worry about cost, but please figure out what is wrong with this dog. He ran a barium x-ray which is where you feed the dog food mixed with a dye, then proceed to take x-rays as the food is traveling through the system. He called me at work that day. Diagnosis megaesophagus.
I had heard the term before but was unsure of the details of this disease. I didn't panic at first. The vet named off several conditions that could cause this, and also mentioned she could have been born with it but unlikely if she has survived this long without management. I did see the barium x-ray and it showed a HUGE esophagus and the food all caught up in it. It also showed possible gastroparesis, which is the inability of food to move at a reasonable rate through the digestive tract. So we did all the testing for Addison's Disease, Myasthenia Gravis, Thyroid conditions and a few others. Nothing conclusive. Now we are thinking somehow she has just managed to live this long after being born with this.
He gave few ideas for treatment. Feeding vertical and food of a soupy consistency. Reglan to help move the food through faster, and Zantac for keeping the acid of the stomach under control. It seemed reasonable to my uninformed self so we just went with it.
I went home that day after work and researched megaesophagus. Prognosis was not good, but I didn't see that it would hurt to try. I found the Yahoo group for megaesophagus and it was there reading through the hundreds of posts that I got a feel for what we were dealing with. Let's just say my hope was dwindling.
So here starts our life with MegaE........
To be continued............
1 comments:
I just found your blog and am concerned how this lovely girl is doing. I brought a pup home and was told by the breeder that she was mine, without cost, because he thought she had mega. For months I would hold her bowl to feed her and she would vomit, sometimes, but not all the time. I fed small meals and made sure that she didn't feel threatened by my other dogs so she wouldn't gulp her food.
Happily, Freyja, did well and grew out of her feeding issues. She may throw up every now and then, but not much. I found that feeling her several small meals throughout the day really helped. She never got so hungry that she would gulp and her tummy was always full.
Freyja is now nearly 5 years old and weighs nearly 90 pounds.
Because you haven't posted in your blog for a while I am praying that your new girl is OK and that your family is OK, too!
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