wraithfodder | My dog's tale of woe, continued... (Reply)

You know those TV shows, where someone rushes into the emergency room, carrying small child in arm. Everybody at the desk, staff and patients, all stop and stare and then someone yells "Triage needed!"

That was me, on Halloween night, with the dog.

He'd been at the vet the day before, and it was determined that his left eye was blind. That I probably had a better chance of winning powerball than he had of regaining any visiion. There were things to worry about, still, as the cause of the hemorrhage was still really unknown. A trauma? High blood pressure? a combination of both? We had to worry about secy-thingthing, where parts of eyes got stuck inside and caused pain. Well, that was Saturday.

On Sunday, the dog was just miserable. He was back on doxy for his anaplasmosis treatment, and we thought that was the problem. I noticed a slight discharge from eye, so applied warm compresses, which seemed to help. In between setting up for Halloween, I'd check on him. After all the Halloween stuff was set up, and I'd handed out candy to two batches of kids, I was back to warm compresses and then his eye began to bleed, like he was crying blood. So I called the emergency vet clinic, told them I was coming, stuck candy outside with sign 'help yourself' and left.

By the time I got down to vet clinic, the dog changed. I did not see it as it was night, and it was only when I came into clinic carrying the dog, whose eye was full of blood all over fur, that everybody saw it was all swollen in area too. The vet rushed out, asked what happened. I didn't know. They took him in back. I gave them what history I had but then the vet who had seen with the original bleed came out and then took over. After a long while, they came out with their side of story. They had given him some heavy duty painkillers as his eye was killing him. I hadn't known as he'd never made one sound :( They was tissue/something blocked around the eye. It could be a puncture or rupture, but the pressure was up so that could have been part of it. I was was able take him home. His eye looked better as they'd had to clean up a bit to examine, but still... went off to drugstore where I shelled out $$$ for one bottle of glaucoma drops. God, I don't know how people without insurance can survive!

The next day I was able to get him into the optha... the eye doctor vet. He squeezed me in as this was sort of an emergency. After a careful exam, the prognosis was bad. He left eye was blind. There would be no more vision. Nada. He had a rupture. Yes, part of that blood from inside the eye. The choices were I could risk a surgery to fix the rupture, but with the pressure problems and other things, it would be an going and expensive battle, plus it would be painful for the dog. The best option was enculeation. This the technical term for removal, and in this case, of the entire eye.

As I type this, he's resting at the vet's, doped up on the good meds, after having his eye removed this afternoon. We also had a benign tumor on his removed at the same time. It was something that wasn't bothering him, but I also did not want to subject him to going under unless he had to.

So when I got to visit him briefly after work. His head is all bandaged up and the vet folk said he was a very good patient and that surgery went very well. I did get a glimpse of the now eyeless eye and in all honestly of what i did see did not look bad at all. I must admit to being very squicky about eye injuries (I close my eyes when people get eyes poked out in movies, just eeeeuuuuu). Once all the fur grows back, it will look like he's squinting/blinking. Apparently this surgery is more common than I thought, as some co-workers had had dogs that had had it done, a friend had a horse who had had it done, etc.

This is the last good photo of him, a day before his eyeball ruptured and sent me fleeing to the vet in middle of night.

He's already adjusted to the most part to loss of vision (although he still bumps into some things due to depth perception issues). It's gonna be a while before he can sit outside again and wait for the deer to arrive so they can stare at each other....

I know we had the right decision in the long run, even though it was difficult. Having an eye that couldn't see, that would require constant maintenance and cause pain, would not be right to inflict on the little guy. Sucks that I'm sitting here with probably $200 worth of drugs (eye drops, pills) that are now useless for the dog. Wonder if animal shelters accept them?

The worst part may be when he comes home, as he has to wear "the collar" (what i call the cone of silence) as he had it on at the vet very briefly and HATED it. Well, he's gonna have to learn to deal with it until the A-okay is given to not use it anymore. Meanwhile, I'll probably sleep on the floor next to him in the sleeping bag as that makes him a bit more comfortable. Ah, the things we do for our furry family.