Marlene

Hi Everyone,

Hope you're all doing well. I'm writing a post today about Marlene. She's our husky mix who we rescued from a bad situation back in October of 2015. We don't know how old she is, a rough estimate is 14 or 15.

I always like to share when our animals are sick, and what we do to remedy them. I think that it helps others out there who might be dealing with the same thing. I've learned a lot from reading other people's pet stories!

Last Wednesday, she suddenly couldn't walk. She kept falling over. Lately she'd become incontinent and started to lose her appetite. Now she was refusing to eat anything and wouldn't even drink her water.

We brought her to the vet on Thursday. They ran some blood tests and discovered she has kidney disease and liver damage. They also diagnosed her with Vestibular Disease - a canine/feline version of vertigo. She was prescribed anti-nausea pills and we decided that getting her eating again would be the first hurdle. They had to give her fluids to rehydrate her and we got some kidney-formula wet food to help support her kidneys a little better. The liver damage is likely caused by the fact that the kidneys aren't working properly and excreting toxins. The liver is having a hard time processing those toxins - especially since Marlene is refusing to eat.

She was also diagnosed with degenerative myelopathy (a disease affecting the spinal cord, resulting in weakness/paralysis of the hind legs); and dementia - but we already knew this by her behaviour because my late pug Winston also suffered from that - and I saw the same symptoms in Marlene.

Vestibular Disease is characterized by eye darting, head tilting, falling over to the side where she tilts her head, wobbliness, dizziness, nausea and incontinence. The symptoms are frighteningly similar to those of a stroke. In the video above you can see her eyes darting. The poor girl was living in a spinning world for 4 days. I had vertigo in my teenage years and it was unbearable. Vestibular Disease can be caused by several things: brain damage or brain disease, inner ear infection, head trauma, toxins or just old age. There is no prescription to cure it unless there is an infection which would be treated with antibiotics. It is supposed to go away after 24-48 hours. If it doesn't go away in that time frame, the diagnosis is not good because it has to do with brain disease. Marlene has no infections.

It's been a 24/7 duty to take care of her, which is hard, but I love her so much so of course I will take care of her the best I can. Her dementia seemed to be getting worse too, as she didn't appear to recognize us or the other pets. She seemed lost. 😟 We were losing hope when it became the fourth day where she didn't eat anything. I called the vet and they suggested blending the food with water and "force feeding" her. I had a large syringe in my medicine cabinet so as Alex was holding her mouth open, I was feeding her. Just like a baby, she wore a bib and tried to spit it all out, but finally she was eating.

This morning, her eyes stopped darting and she's able to walk on her own, but she still tilts her head and wobbles, so we need to walk on the left side of her. She is showing some signs of knowing us again, she came over to me to lie down next to me by my desk.

The biggest challenge at this point is to get her eating on her own. We tried everything imaginable...beef, liver, chicken, pork...potatoes, cheese, carrots, toast, rice, cat food, baby food, McDonalds French fries and even Capt' Crunch cereal! We even tried to give her lollypops, that used to be her favourite treat! She turns her nose at everything. But she is drinking water on her own - a good sign!

If by Monday she is refusing to eat on her own, Alex and I will have some big decisions to make. Would you please keep her in your thoughts my friends? I won't be participating in my usual blog hops/blog parties until things settle a little around here. I hope you all understand! I will still host the Thursday Art Date, but may not be posting too much there, though I think that I need to continue to do some art because it will bring me some joy and get my mind off my troubles!