Thank you for all the encouragement. It was a long night but we made it through. Baxter woke me up around 4:30 a.m. this morning, he was nauseated and restless. This continued for a good part of the early morning hours. Baxter was unable to get up today. He had absolutely no coordination and would fall over to the right if stood up. His head and feet would knuckle under. The poor thing had to be carried everywhere and held up to eat (of course my man still has an appetite
). When he went out to potty, he had diarrhea. He was so much worse this morning that I gave up and gave him a prednisone with his breakfast (10mg). I was a wreck, he was a wreck so off to the emergency vet we went (we contemplated it the night before but held out just in case). I am so glad now that I gave him the pred and that I took him to the vet. He was dehydrated (not sure how that happened so fast) and his heart rate was dangerously high. Once they started fluids, his heart rate began to decline immediately. They ran an echo because he was having arrythmia's and found that he has an extra beat every 15 beats or so. Doctor felt it could be cardiomyopathy but without an extensive workup (which he didn't recommend) it was hard to tell. He stated this was subclinical and didn't expect it to become a problem for him given the other issues we were facing but something we should keep in the back of our minds. At this point Baxter was stable but sadly no better. We reran all of his labwork and since his levels were significantly lower (liver and pancreas) he recommended we give him intervenous steroids to give him a boost. They gave him dexameth and also an injection of mannitol. The vet said that mannitol is some sort of sugar that is used to alleviate severe swelling in the brain. Baxter was still no better, they gave us the option of leaving him overnight for observation or taking him home. We all believed he was stable enough to go home and agreed he would do better at home. The vet told us that this decline could have been related to the steroid switch or it is possible that it was going to happen anyway and just happened to be at a time we were switching around his steroids. He stated he didn't know anything about the natural hydrocortisone so it was difficult for him to say. We wanted to believe it was from the hydrocortisone and that Baxter was indeed going to improve. Still not seeing those signs of improvement they felt we should be seeing, we left the vet still feeling a bit hopeless.
We are home now and Baxter is upright!! I never thought I would be so excited about him simply being upright. When the vet called us and I told him Bax was upright, he told us that any sign of improvement is good. He said that if this were the end of the road, Bax most likely wouldn't show any signs of improvement or respond to the meds. The last time I took Baxter out to potty, although he still has to be carried out and assisted, he climbed the stairs to come back in with my help! I couldn't believe it. Please keep those healing vibes coming!
I'm still worried about the havoc the pred is wreaking on his body but I believe now that this is something we are going to have to deal with. The vet gently reminded us that we are battling something we cannot cure and that at this stage in the game, his comfort matters most. He said we needed to stop treating his lab work and just worry about managing him. Since he appeared fine on his pred previously, we should simply leave him on it.
Thank you all for those wonderful vibes and prayers, they are pulling us through another rough spot in the road. We appreciate every single one. I pray that tomorrow will bring about more improvements. I will be sure to keep you posted.
Aimee
