Showing posts with label AAVEC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AAVEC. Show all posts

Monday, August 29, 2011

Yay for the Eyeball - Boo for the Nose

AP here:
I spoke to Dr. Woodburn this morning and he felt that we should have a rhinoscopy done to try and figure out what is going on with these nosebleeds. I called the internal medicine department at Chesapeake Veterinary Referral Center (CVRC) and scheduled it for 8:00am Wednesday. Tonka's recheck for the pressure problem in his good/bad eye was also today and we got to Dr. Weigts office at 3:30. As soon as he walked down the ramp from the truck he started to sneeze and blood went everywhere. He bled down the ramp, down the sidewalk and into the office. The staff hustled him into a room and Dr. Weigt put some drops of Epinephrine in his nose and stopped the bleeding. Once that was over she numbed his eye and took his pressure and it was down to 10 which is the best news we have had in a while. The debris in the eye is also down so the medication is working. We can drop the pred. acetate down to once a day again but keep the azopt twice a day. Once we got home Tonka's kids came up and visited for a few minutes and then he took a nap. Around 5:45 he got up and went outside and after a minute he started sneezing and the blood started pouring. I tried for about 15 minutes and couldn't get it to stop even with some epinephrine so off to the ER we went http://www.aavec.com/. They checked him out and we all agreed that he should get the scope done Tuesday instead of Wednesday. After a complete blood work up and chest x-rays they let me take him home for the night and we are to return at 7:30am to transfer him from the ER's care to Internal Medicine.

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Oh Poop!

AP here:
I am very happy to report that there have been no nosebleeds for the past 3 days. I am not so happy to report that the other end of the Tonka has been emptying it's contents profusely. He started with diarrhea yesterday and it continued on into today. he got me up at 1:30 then again at 3:30 to go out and then one last time at 4:00. The 4:00 woke me up and I basically just stayed up because I was not sure which end of him a large clump of hair actually came out of. It was centered in a puddle of rust colored liquid. Rust colored or dark brown vomit is not a good sign and usually indicates blood from an ulcer. Prednisone and NSAIDs can cause this and since he is on a steroid drop for his eye and nose I was concerned. Not being 100% sure of where it came from I bagged it and stayed up with him and monitored him for any signs of distress until the vet opened. His breathing and heart rate where normal and his gums and capillary reflex were fine so I didn't want to drag him out to the emergency vet unless he either showed signs of stress or we had another episode. Now his vet is only open on Sundays for emergencies and I respect that and he was not in any obvious distress. Of course in my mind suspected vomiting of blood with a huge hairball that could be part of a larger obstruction is an emergency. So I was at their doorstep with the sample bag when they opened this morning but they were really busy. Their phone was ringing off the hook and we did not have an appointment so... off we went.
Since my first concern was for Tonka I went up the road to the emergency clinic which I should have just done at 4:00 in the morning. We saw Dr. Coles at Anne Arundel Veterinary Emergency Clinic http://www.aavec.com/ and she was great. I had to give her the whole history and she took the sample and came back to tell me it was not vomit which was a great relief. She told me that the amount of steroid he is on for his nose and eyes would not be enough to cause stomach bleeding. The hairball is most likely from him licking his paws to clean off the blood for the 3 days last week. I showed her his youtube video of him romping at the beach last weekend and she also told me that sand can cause stomach upset and diarrhea. We started Metronidazole today so the hind end of him should be fine within 24 hours and now I need to go take a nap