Vet Visit

My dogs are old ladies. They both turned 12 years old this year. So of course they are going to have medical problems right. Well, I wasnt prepared for what I heard today.

Lucy has had a heart murmur for 2 years now. We knew about it and she has been on medication off and on for liquid in her lungs. The last few months she has had episodes where if she is too excited or stressed she will fall over and go limp for several minuites. I found out today it is called Syncope and it is a symptom of congestive heart failure. The vet really wanted to do a chest x-ray to see how bad it was and also to see if she had liquid in her lungs. We did the x-ray and sure enough she is in heart failure and has an enlarged heart. Her lungs looked good though. He put her on 2 different heart medications that will slow the heart failure down but it is what it is. He couldnt give me a definite time estimation that she has left. He said 6 months to maybe a year if we are lucky. But she is a fighter so we will see.

Mimi was the real reason I went in to the vet today. Last week she started doing this head tilt thing. She would not straighten her head and it is so strange. I asked Google first and he said that it was most likely an ear infection but I needed to go in to get antibiotics. The vet saw no sign of an ear infection at all. He did say that it was possible that it was an infection so deep in the ear canal, behind the ear drum that he could not see but Mimi was not bothered being touched there so he doubted it. He wanted me to do an x-ray on her as well today to check for the ear thing. He said if he found anything that he would put her on antibiotics. I asked if we could just do the antibiotics now and see if the tilt improves and it saves me a $300 x-ray fee. He agreed to do that so she is on antibiotics. Scary part: I asked what it could be if it was not an infection and his answer was- Brain tumor. great. To diagnose a brain tumor for sure is a $1500 MRI- n0 thanks. but if it isn't the ear, there is nothing else it can be. He told me that most people chose to put thier dog down at that point. He did say it is not painful. I am still hoping that the antibiotics will fix the problem. We will know in the next couple days.

So a lot of money and a lot of bad news later we are home with new meds (that I hide in grilled chicken strips) Hoping for the best cause I dont want to lose my babies.


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