Hello Everyone,
I felt compelled to write about what we have been going through with our eight month old GiGi in the hope that it might help others out there to diagnose this terrible illness in the early stages.
About two weeks ago, GiGi began sleeping all day and stopped eating. We initally attributed this to the extreme heat and humidity here. She then started crying when we would touch her neck and began having trouble getting up and lying down. We thought perhaps she had fallen off of one of our beds or was rough housing too hard with or five year old daughter. We took her to the vet who recommended x-rays and bloodwork. Her overall health was declining, she was not eating and she would cry so painfully at the slightest touch to her head/neck/shoulder area, so we got the x-rays and bloodwork, but neither showed anything, except for unusual counts in her kidneys. We were so exasperated and beside ourselves at this point because we knew something was terribly wrong with her. The next day, she got up, staggered down the hall - bumping into walls, twisted in two and collapsed. Her heart and breathing stopped, eyes rolled back in her head and tongue turned grey. We rushed her to the hospital while my husband pushed on her chest and breathed into her mouth. She revived within a couple of minutes and by the time we got to the hospital was awake but very cold.
We feel so thankful that the doctor who received her had experienced a case of bacterial meningits years ago and knew immediately that that was what it was after we described all of her symptoms and collapse. He conducted a test of her white and red blood cell count which showed that her levels were extremely off - low white, high red. He immediately put her on a soft tissue antibiotic and told us frankly that we would have to wait and see if she responded. Thankfully, after a few initial rough days, she is showing signs of response and recovery! She is quite emmaciated from days of not eating, but she is now eating and showing some of her old spunk
.
Although apparently not common in animals, the signs of the menigitis were the same as that of a human - we just didn't make the connection and without the separate blood cell test, we wouldn't have known - except for the unusual activity in her kidneys which was caused by the illness and did show in the blood test. Everything else she displayed - extreme pain in head/neck area, loss of appetite, loss of equalibrium and loss of energy are definite signs of bacterial meningitis. I hope this information helps anyone out there to catch this illness at the beginning. The days it took us to figure it out nearly cost GiGi her life.
Blessings and good health!
I felt compelled to write about what we have been going through with our eight month old GiGi in the hope that it might help others out there to diagnose this terrible illness in the early stages.
About two weeks ago, GiGi began sleeping all day and stopped eating. We initally attributed this to the extreme heat and humidity here. She then started crying when we would touch her neck and began having trouble getting up and lying down. We thought perhaps she had fallen off of one of our beds or was rough housing too hard with or five year old daughter. We took her to the vet who recommended x-rays and bloodwork. Her overall health was declining, she was not eating and she would cry so painfully at the slightest touch to her head/neck/shoulder area, so we got the x-rays and bloodwork, but neither showed anything, except for unusual counts in her kidneys. We were so exasperated and beside ourselves at this point because we knew something was terribly wrong with her. The next day, she got up, staggered down the hall - bumping into walls, twisted in two and collapsed. Her heart and breathing stopped, eyes rolled back in her head and tongue turned grey. We rushed her to the hospital while my husband pushed on her chest and breathed into her mouth. She revived within a couple of minutes and by the time we got to the hospital was awake but very cold.
We feel so thankful that the doctor who received her had experienced a case of bacterial meningits years ago and knew immediately that that was what it was after we described all of her symptoms and collapse. He conducted a test of her white and red blood cell count which showed that her levels were extremely off - low white, high red. He immediately put her on a soft tissue antibiotic and told us frankly that we would have to wait and see if she responded. Thankfully, after a few initial rough days, she is showing signs of response and recovery! She is quite emmaciated from days of not eating, but she is now eating and showing some of her old spunk
. Although apparently not common in animals, the signs of the menigitis were the same as that of a human - we just didn't make the connection and without the separate blood cell test, we wouldn't have known - except for the unusual activity in her kidneys which was caused by the illness and did show in the blood test. Everything else she displayed - extreme pain in head/neck area, loss of appetite, loss of equalibrium and loss of energy are definite signs of bacterial meningitis. I hope this information helps anyone out there to catch this illness at the beginning. The days it took us to figure it out nearly cost GiGi her life.
Blessings and good health!
