i feel sick

it makes me physically ill to hear of another doberman i "knew" dying of cardio. this dog was rah's age, diagnosed 5 months before him with questionable values and his recheck one month after rah's diagnosis showed definite changes. he was medicated, and today the owners found him in the yard, dead.

it makes me ill for so many reasons, but some of them are so very selfish. im sad that anyone has to lose a dog to this disease.

but part of me constantly compares - is this dog worse than rah? better than rah? how long are they getting? what drugs are they on? is the dog doing well? and try to make some sense of everything to figure out just how long i'll have.

this dog was definitely not worse than rah. his holter 10 months ago had 14 VPCs and 4 months ago he had 26 VPCs. single, lone VPCs.

rah had 5000.
down to 1000, and now down to 100. but a dog just dropped dead (that had significally better holter parameters) of a fatal arrythmia.

sometimes im just so scared, so terrified.

its just not fair.

RIP kheper. it's never long enough.

oh the fun never ends

so rah survived a tooth pulling, he survived stem cells -

WILL HE SURVIVE DAILY LIFE?

rah aspirated water last weekend with a near drowning secondary to black doberman bitch on top of him while "swimming"... in other words, between him biting constantly at the water and berlin jumping on him, he breathed in a lot. he ended up with mild pulmonary edema secondary to inflammation from the water disrupting his lovely surfactant in the lungs and mild aspiration pneumonia. (we wont talk about what the cat did that same night... im going to ask for new animals!!!)

and of course today he runs around my fathers backyard and tries to get in the water (but doesn't really succeed thank god, since he cant get OUT of the pool) but he rips his pads up.

BAD DOG. bad bad dog.

ok, worse owner. rah is officially going to live in a bubble.

bad bad me!

it's been awhile - i think at the last update we were waiting for rah's holter results -

well the holter results were GREAT - he had 93 VPC's during that 24 hour period, which is a significant drop from the prior holters - they were on a downward trend, but this was the lowest yet!! he started at 5000 in february, dropped to about 1000, then near 500... so under 100 is great!!! of course, no definite claims for stem cells since he's also on medication, but im going to sit here and think it was both of them :)

bad news came when rah fractured a tooth at the very end of may - and about 2 weeks ago, it started to abscess. i'd been watching it and agonizing over it for the weeks in between, but once i saw pus it was time to do something. i scrambled all over the place, trying to locate a facility that had both a boarded dentist as well as a cardiologist on staff and rah ended up at upenn having his tooth pulled - and he's done marvelously! they were great with him there, very open to my input (thankfully since im such an anal retentive owner, but come on my dog is a scientific marvel!) and he handled anesthesia just fine, no bleeding (since he's vWD affected too)...

so here we are, recovering - he's allowed to start retrieving tomorrow again post-sx and he wants his life back to normal - he says where are the toys?!?!?!?!?

waiting on the holter...

well, rah had his first recheck last thursday - i know im late reporting... but... it was GOOD!

rah's echo showed improvements in ALL areas - his heart shrunk!!! all the values were better than his original diagnostic echo in february, and he was on the table for over an hour to get all the views they needed- and he didn't throw a single VPC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! that's HUGE.

his holter was mailed out to florida a few days ago and hopefully i will have the results in the next week or so - and we can go from there. but i am incredibly hopeful - the cardiologist warned me that the improvement isn't expected to be seen in the first month, but more over the long term - but this is GOOD change in the first month and i hope it continues over the next rechecks.

on a bad note, i may have a problem again sourcing one of his meds as its off the market and now the compounding pharmacy is having problems getting materials. so i bought 5 bottles of it to tide me over and animerge has a bottle on the shelves that i am having lydia hold onto as an emergency.

but im hopeful - this is the first time i think ive felt hopeful about this in a long time.

first recheck!!!!!!!!

Today is Rah's first recheck with the cardiologist after the stem cell implantation - we hit a few snafu's because the holter monitor that was shipped last week (that i had hoped to have done already and ready to ship back) hasn't actually arrived yet - problematic only because it has the disk that we need to transfer the results of todays echo on to mail back with the holter. hopefully GSVS has a disk we can transfer results to...

and maybe its a blessing in disguise because it's been unbearably hot these past two days - in the 80s and 90s - while i want to stress rah during the holter and get a true test - i really dont want him to have to wear the neoprene vest during that time frame because he's having virtual heat strokes as is just running around in the yard (he's always been heat intolerant - well, he doesn't temper himself and then realizes its too hot and humid to be stupid and then he takes 20000 hours to recover in the house - has done this since he was a puppy!) ... so maybe its for the best that he didnt get holtered. hopefully the weather will break just a bit (pray for temps in the 70s??) so we can holter him next week.

rah has his one month recheck next thursday with gsvs... his holter is in the mail from florida for me to put on when it gets here.

of course, the most wonderful (insert sarcasm here) part is that he fractured a tooth sometime this week. i am so not thrilled with this. so very not thrilled and i really dont know what to do about this.

the paranoia sets in

rah is acting just a slight bit off. did a few things odd for him... and im getting worried. nothing says CARDIO...

but this am when i went into the basement to do laundry, he didnt follow me down. now, he usually comes - did he not come because its the morning and hes SUPER LAZY In the morning? is it because he's feeling out of sorts because he has no playmate since berlin is on crate rest and he has no one to wrestle with?

last night at training it took me telling him like 12 times to get a drink of water before he would, and he was all freaked by his crate??? and it looked like he wouldnt put his head down - but later on he went right over to drink his water no problem. he trained just like normal, no issues. no signs of pain. no lethargy. wanted his cookies no problem.

and im convinced that his breath is different. this absolutely could be because for the past month he's eaten NOTHING but kibble for the first time in his life - he's got gas, he poops more, and his teeth are dirty, so its not inconceivable that his breath would smell right? its everything i can do to not stop at the clinic before i leave today to run bw on him before i go to the conference to make sure hes not in liver or kidney failure though.

see, this is the part i hate. the staring at your dog like something could go wrong at any moment. waiting for the other fucking shoe to drop.