Just yesterday, you may recall, I again thought Cassie was pounding at Death’s door. She went in the closet and tried to hide in a corner (again). There wasn’t much I could do about it today: getting into the vet proved to be impossible around a two-hour choir rehearsal followed by a lengthy special religious hoe-down.
During today’s long-distance sing-a-thon, I got an elaborate earful about Valley Fever from a friend on the choir who has lost three dogs to it. Spent the afternoon in a Holy Blue Funk, singing to God and His Archangels whilst contemplating the demise of my little doggie. Probably tomorrow at 8:30 a.m. sharp, when I’m supposed to show up at the vet’s doorstep.
But…then…on the way home, them thar Angels began to speak. Nay, even to break out into a little song of their own. And the verses went like this:
When you called the vet about her cough, dear Estupida, the first reaction there was that she had a contagious bronchitis that’s been going around. They did not say whether they thought it was bacterial or viral, nor did they put a name to it. They only said they’d been seeing a lot of it, and then said “come get these blue pills.”
The handy-dandy blue pills DID make it better. But when the cough hadn’t completely gone away after 10 days or so, Estupida, you called back expecting to cadge another bottle of blue pills. Instead they invited you and the dawg to make a trip across town to the veterinary.
The vet opined that what ailed the dog was Valley fever, based on an X-ray that proves nothing. That X-ray could also image pneumonia or a bad case of bronchitis; it could also image a heart inflammation caused by heartworm, endocarditis, or congestive heart failure. Any of these would cause a severe cough. The blood panel came back negative for Valley fever but showing elevated values for a couple of measures that can be elevated by any kindof inflammation or infection. Yes, often VF tests do come back negative even in the presence of coccidiomycosis. BUT it is not unreasonable to suspect that such a test could come up negative because of the absence of coccidiodes. A second veterinarian at a different veterinary clinic suggested this and stated that she felt the test results were ambiguous and should be repeated after three or four weeks. So: we have no empirical proof that the dog really has Valley fever.
Nevertheless, assuming the dog probably had VF, MarvelVet put her on a fearsome anti-fungal drug called fluconazole, which is nasty stuff with superbly nasty side effects. Within a few days of beginning this drug, the dog began to grow weaker and exhibit signs of failing health:
Total loss of appetite
Extreme thirst
Incontinence of Biblical proportions
Lethargy
Loss of interest in everything around her
Inability or unwillingness to move around.
Diarrhea
Vomiting
Gastric upset
And wouldn’t you know: she kept on coughing. By now she’d reached a point where every time she tried to drink water, she would choke on it and then start wheezing!
The blue pills are Temaril-P, which contains an antihistamine and some prednisone and whose purpose is to suppress coughing and reduce inflammation. When we took her off the Temaril, the coughing got worse. When we put her on the fluconazole, she got really, really sick.
Sooooo….this leads us to, goddammit,…
What if the problem is NOT Valley fever? What if it isn’t any other fearful disease, either? What if the initial cause of the cough actually was the bug that was going around? She’s the same age I am in doggy years…and the last time I caught a chest cold, it took SIX MONTHS to shake the cough. Maybe the vet’s first guess was right, and it’s simply taking her a long time to get rid of the cough because she’s 12 years old.
Just now my money is on Numero 5.
Tomorrow I’m going to ask him to prescribe more of the Temaril and propose that we keep her on a low dosage for about ten days or two weeks. THEN wean her off and see what happens.
Whaddaya bet the pooch is still alive in ten days or two weeks? And still kickin’…or rather, kickin’ again?
Okay, I know it’s utterly graceless to bring this up…but when Cassie shuffles off this mortal coil — which probably will happen within the next few days or even hours — then what am I gonna do?
Cassie had a very bad night — labored breathing, panting all night long (I know: I was awake listening to her). And she has decided eating is a thing of the past. She flat out refuses to eat. Yesterday I did get a 2½-ounce bottle of puréed baby-food turkey down her. But this morning, offered puréed chicken, she wouldn’t touch it. Even swallowing the mush seems to be difficult for her.
I’m trying to move tomorrow’s 8:30 a.m. veterinary appointment up to 11:30 this morning, which will mean I’ll miss the choir event I want to participate in this afternoon. My guess is the vet figures he’ll have to put her down, since nothing is helping her and I’m not in a position to spend thousands of dollars trying to revive a 12-year-old dog who’s probably on her last legs, no matter what we try to do.
For quite some time, I’ve had my eye on this dog. The rescue has had the pooch for awhile… And I do miss my German shepherds. That would be why I tend to revisit the GerShep rescue page. Do I want to apply for Lionel/Johnny? He’s a handsome fellow, about the right age, already house- and leash-trained. And white GerSheps tend to have better temperaments and overall better health than the horrifically overbred black-and-tan lines. No one wants white GerSheps because they tend not to bite and they’re not very threatening. 😉
Herein lies the issue: The whole matter of what happens after Cassie is gone represents a tangled mess of questions:
Should I stay in this house, or move now, while I still am physically able to do so?
•The surrounding area is really not very safe, and the city seems to be actively working to trash the area, letting drug-addicted transients ride the Blightrail for free, dumping them off at the end of the line on Gangbanger’s Way, building yet another meth clinic in the neighborhood (the 24-hour one around the corner serves over two thousand hopheads a day!) and planning to trash Gangbanger’s Way by running the Blightrail west and east to planned terminuses in two ghost malls. This will bring even more crime and drug addicts than we already have, which is more than enough thankyouverymuch.
•Consequently, I don’t feel especially safe here. The solution is the same solution that served well in the similarly besieged Encanto District, where my ex- and I lived for some 15 years until we threw in the towel because we had the unreasonable idea that our little boy should be able to play outdoors in relative safety. The solution: a German shepherd dog.
•And, of course, a pistol. Got one. Don’t got the t’other. Yet.
•On the other hand, the only other two places in the Valley where I can afford to live and that I think I wouldn’t hate are so far away from the centers of my social life that moving there would bring a screeching, permanent halt to my social life. I do not make friends easily (not by a long shot!) and so effectively this would mean the end of any activities outside the living room, the bedroom, and the backyard. Permanently.
•Houses in the ‘Hood are affordable because of the increasingly dangerous slums along Conduit of Blight Boulevard and the meth gang’s territory north of Gangbanger’s Way. We form a kind of middle-class buffer zone between these increasingly creepy, declining areas and a very upscale district called North Central, where free-standing houses start, on the low end, at around 700 grand. The houses in this neighborhood, especially if they’ve been kept more or less up to date and in good repair, are twice as much house than you can buy for the same money elsewhere in the central Phoenix area — both in terms of size and in terms of quality.
Five hundred grand? SERIOUSLY????
Comparable houses (sort of) in the “Arcadia Lite” area, for example, run upwards of $500,000…and they’re NOT comparable: they’re older, smaller, and they don’t even have garages — they were built back in the day when it was safe to park your car in a carport.
•Only two areas of the Valley offer housing that’s comparable to mine in a price range I can afford: Sun City and Fountain Hills. Sun City is halfway to freaking Barstow; Fountain Hills is halfway to freaking Payson! They’re both a long way from the people I know, the things I like to do, and the places I like to go. Ruby the Corgi would be placed at huge risk if I moved her to Sun City: the place is truly overrun with coyotes, which have been known to jump a six- or eight-foot back wall, grab a small dog, and fly back out of the yard with it before the human can budge. Fountain Hills also has coyotes — and the occasional bobcat. It also has ticky-tacky construction — the type where you consider a house “old” after ten years. Sun City has low property taxes, but it’s like living in a mausoleum. Fountain Hills would be like moving to another town altogether.
About an even trade…
So that leaves…well…stay here or move to Fountain Hills.This right here is about what I could afford in Fountain Hills. I hate it. I’ve always hated those stupid fake-arch windows that were the rage in cheap tract housing a few decades ago…and just look at that hideous stuff they put on the things! And one of Fountain Hills’ lesser charms is that it has no natural gas service, and so you’re stuck with those horrid glass-top stoves. Ugh. I’ve tried to learn to live with one of those things — Satan and Proserpine put one into this house. Loathed it: never could get used to it. Plumbed in a gas line and replaced the damn thing with a real stove. Though Fountain Hills has much to recommend it, the distance from activities and friends, the ticky-tacky architecture, and the all-electric kitchens add much to de-recommend it.
If we say that leaves one option — stay here — then we’re brought back to our starting point, where housing is concerned: this area is unsafe.
Next question: Assuming I stay here, should I get another German shepherd?
The sane answer is “hell, no!” Or…is it?
• About every third house in the ‘hood now houses a large dog, many of them mighty ferocious-looking. The reason for that is obvious: I’m not the only one who feels unsafe in an area overrun with drug-addicted transients, burglars, and car thieves. The only way the ex and I were able to stay in the Encanto district as long as we did was that we had Greta the German Shepherd, she who chased out a cat burglar at three one morning, who stood between me and a guy trying to break down my front door, who saved my child’s life twice, and who had the most preternatural sense of human nature I’ve ever seen in man nor beast.
•Having lived with several GerSheps since then, I can attest that though none of them were Dog Geniuses in the sense that Greta was, all of them served as effective sh!thead deterrents. NO ONE bothers you when you have an animal like that standing at your side and glowering in their direction. But…
• German shepherds are expensive to maintain. Although it’s likely that the white line will have fewer inbred health problems than the black-and-tan model, you can be sure that even a white GerShep will be a walking vet bill. A gun is far cheaper, over the long run. Though it doesn’t make for very good company…
•I am getting to be an old lady. Chances are good a reasonably young dog will outlive me. Then what happens to it?
•This Lionel/Johnny hound looks, in the group’s uninformative photos, to be about three years old, maybe as much as five. German shepherds typically live about nine to twelve years. In six years, I’ll be 79; in nine years, I’ll be 82 years old! Do I really want to have to deal with a sick 90-pound dog at that age? Would that even be possible?
• Would a smaller dog have the same deterrent action, allowing me to feel safe living in my home? No. I already have another smaller dog: Ruby weighs all of 20 pounds. First: a yapper does nothing to discourage an accomplished burglar or a wacked-out meth addict. Second, a small dog cannot hold its own against a coyote — which our neighborhood also hosts, though not in such gay abandon as Sun City does — but a German shepherd most certainly can. And third, perps think little dogs are cute (or annoying), same as you and I do: they’re not deterred by a bouncy yapper.
Welp: no word from the vet’s office about taking the dog over there at 11:30 this morning. So I guess it’s off to choir for me. Time for a shower and a paint job…
We now have a vet’s appointment at 8:30 on Sunday morning (any question why I favor this vet?). That will be difficult: it’s a half-hour or forty minutes to the guy’s office, and I have to be at the church at 10. So it will mean flying across the city through the usual challenging traffic, flying back, dropping her off, and flying to the church. Complicating matters, M’hijito is leaving Charley here Sunday a.m. so he can drive to Colorado to visit his 104-year-old grandmother.
Oh, God.
They wanted to see her at 11:30 tomorrow, but church has a shindig tomorrow afternoon, for which choir call is noon. I do not want to miss it, but probably should have given up and opted the event, to get the little dog to a doctor sooner. Asked if they could manage something in the afternoon or earlier in the morning: no chance.
Perhaps I exaggerate how sick she is. Hope so.
So she quit eating altogether. In spite of not having consumed a bite of food for a day and a half, she still had diarrhea this morning. That was weird. When I did coax her to eat a little hamburger, a day or so ago, she perked up quite a bit, so I figure food is good.
Naturally I take recourse to the Hypochondriac’s Treasure Chest: the Internet. Google “how to coax sick dog to eat.” And lo! Among the several suggests was baby food.
Trot down to a grocery store and buy a bottle (1) of puréed turkey. AJ’s has an extremely limited selection, and most of the stuff was veggies or fruit. The turkey was the only unalloyed meat. Fly home with this stuff…
Ruby, who is unafflicted, naturally was waiting by the door. That dog went berserk before I even got the lid off. She wanted that baby food!
Fought off the puppy. With difficulty, flang her out of the bedroom where Cassie was hiding. Spooned up some of the stuff, and by golly…after a tentative start, she ate it. Eventually she got the whole jarful down — that was only 2.5 ounces, but it’s 2.5 ounces better than none. Normally they each eat a quarter-pound of food per meal — half a pound a day.
It’s the first thing she’s eaten in two days. So I’m hoping that if I can get one bottle of it down her tomorrow morning and another before I leave for choir and one in the evening, that will be enough to sustain her. Exactly how I’m supposed to deal with letting her outside and back in while I’m hanging out in the choir room half the day escapes me…but I think what I’ll have to do is leave the back door open, and pray for the best.
So with this success chalked up, I ran over to the Walmart and stocked up on half-a-dozen bottles of the stuff, enough to last through Monday. By then, I hope, we’ll have a better idea of how to treat this thing, if it can be treated at all.
You know, on the 14th I wrote that Cassie had been sick for 10 days…that would mean this ailment became evident on the 4th. That’s four weeks. No wonder the poor little beast is exhausted!
It probably is remarkable that she’s still alive at all. If she had some ordinary bronchitis, you’d think it would have passed by now. Vet said he’s concerned that the problem is something a lot worse than Valley fever…but he didn’t say what. TB? Indeed, some fairly colorful ailments can cause a chronic cough and choking. Heart disease. Object lodged in the throat. Tracheal collapse. Heartworm. Canine influenza. Asthma. Chronic bronchitis. Cancer.
Cassie is getting steadily worse. Today she can barely drag herself around, and she refuses to eat anything, even a single piece of the fancy kibble I give her for treats. Twice now, this dog has been so sick that I thought she might die, very soon.
I’ve made another appointment with the “second opinion” vet — turns out the one I saw out there was actually a part-timer, a kind of visiting vet, but now the regular guy (who sees my son’s dog) is back. This afternoon, he will have the joy of seeing a cranky old lady and her sick little dog.
This is what I think…oh, no. Make it this is what I’m sure of: The drug given for supposed Valley fever, fluconazole, is making her very sick. All of the symptoms she’s suffering, except for the bloody urine and the wheezing, are listed as side effects of fluconazole. We do not have any empirical proof that the dog actually does have Valley fever: the first test came back negative for Valley fever. This is not uncommon, and so we moved forward with the first vet’s diagnosis.
The longer the dog is on this drug, the sicker she gets. Today she will eat nothing at all, and she can barely move around, except to piss out an occasional lake on the family room floor. She is incontinent and unable to get to the back door before it all comes pouring out. Of the phenomena she’s suffering, almost every one of them appears in the University of Arizona Medical School’s list of fluconazole side effects in dogs:
loss of appetite
nausea
vomiting
diarrhea
excessive drinking and urination, or leaking urine while asleep
lethargy
If she doesn’t start to eat, she’s going to starve to death. I cannot afford to hospitalize a dog and keep it on life support so as to administer a toxic drug on the off-chance that three to six months of such treatment will beat back a fatal disease.
I can see four reasonable scenarios to explain what’s going on:
Possibility 1: She in fact had the contagious bronchitis that was going around, but because she’s elderly, it took longer for her to get over it and so it was mistaken for a chronic, endemic disease. In this scenario she does not now and never has had Valley fever; what ails her is either a respiratory infection or the side effects of the drug.
Possibility 2: She does have Valley fever acquired fairly recently and, as is not uncommon, it hasn’t shown up as a positive titer yet. In that case the drug is causing most of the symptoms, with the exception of the cough.
Possibility 3: She’s had Valley fever for awhile (just about any human or dog or horse that lives for any length of time in the low deserts of Sonora, Arizona, and California harbors Valley fever, usually asymptomatically) and it has advanced to the point where it is causing symptoms. In that case, the drug is still causing most of the symptoms, but it’s not likely to do much good.
Possibility 4: Now for something completely different! She has neither bronchitis nor Valley fever, but some as-yet-undiagnosed ailment that is much more serious. Her symptoms may be indicative of that…or may be the side effects of a drug she doesn’t need.
Just talked to First Opinion Vet, who finally had time to call me (it’s the lunch hour here). His money is on Possibility 4. He thinks there’s something more going on than Valley fever. He says the only way we can find out is to mire ourselves in every more complicated and expensive tests, and where the end-point would be is anyone’s guess. He feels that is not a good thing to do to the dog…and I will say, neither do I. Even if I could afford to be sucked into a vortex of medical testing for a dog that is at the end of its natural lifespan, my sense is that it would be cruel to put her through that — especially since it’s likely to be pointless.
As for me, I’m putting money on Possibility 1: she had bronchitis, was inappropriately treated for it, and got over the cough in the normal course of events. And what we’re looking at now is the result of a drug that did nothing for the ailment but has worked wonderfully to make her spectacularly sick.
I had already decided, before His Vetship called, to take her off the drug, stand back, and watch what happens. If she dies, she dies. Like all of us, she’s gonna die anyway. When he called and heard my whinge — and more to the point, heard that the dog not only is not improved but is lots worse — he agreed that we should quit giving her ALL the drugs, including even the small amount of Temaril-P. If it’s true that the worst of the ailment arises from the drugs’ side effects, she may feel a little better even if the underlying problem is something we haven’t figured out yet.
Which, IMHO, is a veterinarianly way of saying “ooops!”
Each day, Cassie has her ups and her downs. And it seems that each down gets deeper. She’s in a bad way every morning, but then seems to revive a bit around noon.
Today I noticed she wasn’t in her normal nest. Or anywhere else. Thinking I’d accidentally left her outside, I went running around calling her: no response. Finally I found her in the clothes closet, squirreled away in a corner.
This is not a good sign. In all the ten years this dog has lived here, she has never gone into that closet. Maybe once or twice to sniff at a shoe, but really: she doesn’t go in there.
The other not-good sign: she flat refused to eat this morning. I managed to coax a few bites down her by mixing some of the food with water to make a kind of soup. But she wouldn’t even take all of that. Either she’s having a difficult time swallowing or just doesn’t feel like being bothered. My money’s on the latter: my guess is she simply doesn’t want to eat any more.
If you’re going to let Nature take its course, you’ve gotta listen to Nature and understand what She’s telling you. Today She definitely was trying to say something…
The vet’s office called to say he wanted me to come pick up some Temaril tablets to try to deal with the refusal to eat issue. Why, I don’t know. Temaril is a cough suppressant. She’s stopped coughing, and he knows it.
I am now flat broke, budgetwise: $5 left to live on for the rest of the month. I transferred a hundred bucks over from emergency savings to get through the next week…hope I won’t have to spend much of it, but am basically out of food except for what’s in the freezer and what’s growing in the backyard.
At any rate, the UPs: Along about noon, the dog seems to revive. This is becoming a pattern. But every day, the morning “down” seems worse than the previous day’s. Really, today I thought she might not be alive by the time I got back from the vet’s — it’s an hour of driving, round trip. So I pull the car into the garage, climb out, and hear Cassie barking on the other side of the door!
She hasn’t barked in days.
Fling wide the gates…and lo! There’s Cassie standing there bright-eyed and wagging, looking normal as apple pie.
WTF?
The garage door is open. Ruby is still in the car — I’d taken her with me because I thought there was such a high chance Cassie would pass while I was out fighting traffic, and frankly, I do not want Ruby to decide to eat the remains.
She is a dog, you know…
So Cassie walks outside, Ruby being locked in the vehicle and so unable to make her escape to Yuma. Cassie strolls around, sniffs, pees, acts pretty damn normal. I get the mail, we stroll back inside as though this were just another day in Paradise.
Right away, while she still is acting like she’s going to live, I mix up some more dog food swill, causing her to get about half the remainder of this morning’s dog food down, along with about a third to half a cup of water.
Vet called just a minute ago. I pointed out that Temaril was for a cough and she’s stopped coughing. He said it contains a steroid to reduce inflammation, and can sometimes make an ailing dog feel better. Before I left the Funny Farm, I’d given her one of the remaining half-tablets from the previous bottle. He says it can act pretty fast, and that might explain her apparent revival. He also speculated that she may just feel bad when she wakes from a night of snoozing and it could take several hours for her to begin to feel better.
I reminded him that she’s 12 years old. He said…yeah…but made no further comment on her superannuation. He did remark, though, that Corgis are unusually tenacious dogs, and so one shouldn’t give up on her too soon.
So Cassie the Beleaguered Corgi seemed better after mid-morning. She kinda sprang back. Along about 2:00 p.m., we had an appointment with a vet at the clinic where my son takes his dog. My, that was a refreshing drive: only took about 10 minutes to get there, as opposed to the 40-minute drive required to arrive in MarvelVet’s precincts.
I explained my questions and misgivings to this vet. She allowed as to how these were reasonable questions and thought that indeed there was some ambiguity in the various indications. All in all, though, she agreed with MarvelVet that what ails the dog is probably Valley fever.
However, on this check-up Cassie seemed significantly better. Whereas MarvelVet was alarmed because he could hear the congestion in her little chest, today no such sounds were audible. Her temperature was down to normal. Her cough has been better most of the day. She only wheezed once at the vet’s office.
She (vet) also said the fluconazole should have few bothersome side effects in dogs. She thinks Cassie has been dragging because of the ailment, not because of the cure. And she suggested testing her again in three or four weeks, by which time she suspects the titre will change from negative to positive.
Hm.
The incubation period for Valley fever is 7 to 28 days after exposure. If you believe this is a new infection, that would make sense: this summer we had several dust storms that blew into the hood. Because we’re in the rain shadow of the North Mountains, we do tend to be protected from so-called “haboobs,” a stupid sell-newspapers name for dust storms, but this year they were pretty fierce. So…yeah…maybe she picked this up over the summer.
But the truth is, if you live in Arizona’s low desert, you’re exposed just by virtue of living here. You can harbor the fungus for a long time without ever noticing. The if something happens to dent your immune system, voilà! You notice… And 12 years of doggy age — some 70 years± of human years — most surely is enough to dent your immune system. WhatEVER,,,the likelihood of her having picked it up over the past decade or so is extremely high.
So this vet: she’s from Trinidad. I liked her a lot. She spent a lot of time examining the pooch and chatting with the human, and it was clear she really knew what she was talking about. Yeah: I was impressed.
She and her husband, an IT dude, are so revolted by the political situation in our country that they’re seriously thinking of moving back.
And therein lies the brain drain issue: they’re only two of the many young professionals I know who speak of leaving the country. Permanently. If we haven’t stupided down America enough, the present administration is busily delivering the coup de grâce: when all the bright young men and women leave, we’ll have only a few smart old people left to keep the nation on track. And once they’re gone? Bye-bye American Republic, hello Banana Republic.
But as for the dog? She seems much better right this minute. She drags in the morning, but by mid-day perks up. There’s hope that she may still have a year or three of the good life. Or maybe even…greatness…
Just yesterday, you may recall, I again thought Cassie was pounding at Death’s door. She went in the closet and tried to hide in a corner (again). There wasn’t much I could do about it today: getting into the vet proved to be impossible around a two-hour choir rehearsal followed by a lengthy special religious hoe-down.
