A sad tail...

Clyde has been a part of our family since we moved to St. Louis.  We picked him up from a Pyrenees rescue near Springfield, MO, and he kept Marantha company in a (somewhat scary) new neighborhood while we adjusted to urban life.  He has kept squirrels at bay for six years now, patrolling our yard (to the point of wearing paths through the grass) and

Two years ago, Clyde started having seizures.  This came out of the blue, and M and I both dug in and learned a lot about idiopathic epilepsy in dogs.  We got very lucky in that Clyde responded beautifully to phenobarbital.  Despite taking enough at a time for us to need a DEA waiver (seriously), he adjusted to the dosage within a couple of weeks and we witnessed no grand mal seizures in two years.  About a week ago, he had a big one, so we took him to the vet.  Blood work came back within normal bounds, so we increased his phenobarb slightly.

In the past six months, we had noticed an increase in balance problems, stumbling, and even a couple cases where he just fell down, unprovoked.  I had chalked these up to a combination of arthritis and  his seizure meds.

Night before last, he had another grand mal, and was extremely disoriented afterwards.  I ended up sleeping downstairs with him, because otherwise he started howling and barking.  This morning, he had a grand mal at 4:30, followed by a serious of cluster seizures.  These weren't grand mals, but focal--just his head was seizing while he stood up.  We counted 7 or 8 of them.  After the grand mal, he was terribly disoriented, and I think blinded for a short while.  He jerked away if I touched him, and was mostly unresponsive to sound or visual cues.  He refused water as well as ice cream (I read yesterday that after a seizure, it was good to give a little vanilla ice cream to help stabilize the depleted blood sugars).  This is a dog that used to eat bricks.  He's always hungry, and always thirsty.

M helped me carry him downstairs--no mean feat, considering she is 5 1/2 months pregnant, Clyde weighs just south of a buck-twenty, and our stairs are original from the house built in 1897.  He wasn't happy about the process, but we got him loaded into the car and I ran him out to Webster Groves Animal Hospital.  He had two seizures in the car, another one in the parking lot, and another one in the ER.  Vet techs muzzled him and helped me get him out of the car, but he freaked out and wouldn't stay on the stretcher.  We ended up walk/dragging him into the exam room.

So now, he is doped up, and they are trying to stabilize him.  The vet is concerned about the change in behavior over the past few months, and thinks it is possible that the balance issues coupled by the "breakthrough" seizing that there is possibly a slow-growth mass or tumor that is causing all of this.  An MRI would be the next step, but that is approximately $2500.  Where would that leave us?  If positive for a tumor, we wouldn't elect to do brain surgery (if it was even operable) or chemo.  If negative, we're back with idiopathic epilepsy that isn't managed well pharmacologically.

Best case scenario now is also pretty bleak.  Upping the phenobarbital dosage is the next step, with a potential further step of adding potassium bromide.  Those things (singly or jointly) might stabilize him, but for how long?  Could be a day, or a week, or three years.  What is certain is that we have a toddler now, and a baby on the way.  Our ability to cope with this situation, should it recur, is rapidly decreasing.  And of course, there is the horrific thought that Clyde might hurt himself or one of us accidentally.

I wasn't expecting this, and now that I'm facing it I can hardly believe how much it hurts.  But I don't think this is a good quality of life for him, and it certainly isn't for us.  I never wanted this decision to be about money, but of course that has to play into it, too...