Holter Monitor Experience?

[LilianaLove]

Vitamine E cream sounds like a good idea. I spoke with the (great) cardiologist today. He thinks she's responding well to medication but he's hesitant to increase it anymore, since he thinks it'll slow her heart rate too much. She goes in on thursday for her holter monitor. It'll be thursday at 1pm to friday at 1pm.

Her CBC and T4 are normal. Her BUN is high, in the 40s, but her creatinine is still good at 1.4 (very good, her kidneys are still doing alright). The high BUN is attributed to her dehydration. Unfortunately, her sodium is back down to 143 and potassium is back up to 5.3, which is why she isn't drinking and is back to where we started. She really needs to get back on the florinef, which is why I'm glad I was able to get her a holter appointment this quickly.

She's giving me a really hard time. She's all of a sudden developed crazy separation anxiety, and is destroying her wire crate when I'm away (I was only gone 5 hours today). I don't know if it's just pent up energy or she just got used to me taking her with me every day for a week. She can't keep doing this, or I'll be spending money on a monkey box.

Thanks all for the well-wishes. I don't know what we're going to do if we're put on permanent exercise restriction; hopefully it doesn't come to that. Honestly, I think she's losing her mind and I feel really bad for her. You can't just take a dog like this and say "nope, no exercise" because a walk around the block is not even a warm up for her. She's used to tugging and running and playing agility and flyball and lure coursing. I can't stand to see this dog destroying things and being so anxious and not be able to do what she loves. Hopefully this is just a bump in the road and we can get back to our regularly scheduled programming in just a little bit.

 

[ELubas]

Poor Lily :( My boy had SAS and there were times when we had to keep him quiet and it was torture for both of us. I did teach him a lot of tricks It helped a little to occupy his mind. I also "hid" his meals in kongs around the house- he loved that but back then I fed kibble. Would not work well if you do raw like I do now. Hopefully this will be temporary and she can resume some activity. My boy had a pretty normal life and I used to let him do his thing and pray he would be ok. Just felt he needed to be a dog. But adjusting those meds is tricky so you have to be careful and patient. Know the feeling well. Please keep us posted on Lily's progress. Such a pretty little girllovicon

 

[LilianaLove]

Alright so Lily's doing well after her monitor. She has some serious rashes where the pads were, but, in all honesty, rashes/scrapes/bruises/etc. are all common place to Little Miss Sensitive Skin. She should be fine in a few days. I'll have the results by the end of next week.

(Long story- question at the end)

But something more concerning happened yesterday. Yesterday morning, I found a very large quantity of urine in the kitchen, two separate instances (they were two obvious separate piles). I took samples from both. They had specific gravities ~1.015 and a lot of blood, but no bacteria, but a lot of amorphous debris and a pH of 9. When I got home from work, I noticed Lily had peed in her crate (she NEVER does that), then guzzled water (again, something that never happens, I'm thrilled usually when she just gets to the water bowl). I took a urine sample from when I got home and then again at 8pm, and they paralleled the urine from the morning.

She then vomited shortly before we were going to feed her dinner. She's usually ok after she vomits, so we fed her dinner about an hour later. Five minutes later she regurgitated most of it. I was worried but decided to monitor her overnight. She vomited again, food, at 4am. At this point I was really worried, thinking it was a blockage. I racked my brain, contemplating taking her to the ER or waiting. I decided to wait. Her temp was 100.4, HR 90 with no pulse deficits, normal CRT. She was stable, so I decided to wait.

Around 8:30am she woke up, still seemed normal. I got a urine sample and headed to work. My friend met me there, we ran a full UA again and bloodwork. Her specific gravity was up to 1.032, ph 8, still some blood in there but less amorphous debris. The truly amazing part was her bloodwork. Her CBC was normal, PCV 43%, TS 5.8, BUN 28 , creatinine 1.3 :D! I was amazed when I saw it. The only thing left to do was run her electrolytes. We don't have an electrolyte machine where I work, so I took the serum to another hospital. Hot damn I was right- potassium was 4.0 (off florinef, her potassium is typically around 5.3) and her sodium was 148 (off florinef, typically 143).

This was crazy. This dog has NEVER, even on florinef, been able to get her potassium that low. I believe she was vomiting from nausea from hypokalemia.

My question- I've read that sota can cause hypokalemia. Is this true? Has anyone else experienced this?

 

[Gatorblu]

From the quick search I just did I didn't see anything that would lead to a concetion with sota and low paotassium. Soloxine may be a another issue. I read that meds that effect the metabolism cancause it. So I think I will be giving Thor more bananas!

 

[LilianaLove]

So Lily's results came back. She seems stable. She had one period of SVTs, 25 in a row, when she was running around. Other than that her resting heart rate when sleeping was ~80bpm and she seemed otherwise stable.

She's been cleared to resume normal exercise, and the cardiologist says she can even do some agility if she has a proper warm-up. I'm hesitant to start her back up in flyball and agility, because dogs go from 0-60 (well, 0-25) in those sports and there is no real 'warm-up' for it like I can use for agility. Agility is much more controlled, and she never hits her top speed in agility. But she can hit 25mph in lure coursing, and I don't think her heart is ready for that yet.

For right now, we still have no answers. We don't know why it happened and we don't know if it will go away. She needs an echo and holter again in 6 months, and a recheck ekg in 3 months.

She and I are going to obedience tomorrow morning, and I'll take my stethoscope with me so I can keep an eye/ear on it. When she goes to agility on tuesday I'll definitely take it with me, as I'm going to assume to hear the arrhythmia. The cardiologist said her HR may get up to 180bpm and that will be ok (I guess?). I don't want to cause any issues, but this dog needs her life back. She officially cannot be crated anymore, so she's been staying in my room while I go to school/work. Hopefully once we get back to regular exercise and everything she'll be back to normal.

Thanks for all the help, I'll be sure to keep you posted with how she does at agility on tuesday. We'll mostly be working on collection skills and groundwork, no tough, long courses for a while. But just wait until she gets back in that competition ring, those dogs won't know what hit them!