Cheeto

It hasn’t been a good month for Cheeto. A few weeks ago, he started limping, which happens time to time if he jams one of his toenails. It usually improves within a day or two, so I usually just baby him and give him his usual pain-relieving low dose of Bayer.

But after a couple days, he stopped putting weight on it entirely, and by the fourth day he wouldn’t even move. We had to carry him around. So I took him to the vet and he had pretty limited motion in both hind legs and his hurting front leg. So she gave me some Previcox, which is an NSAID for dogs. If he improved, that would indicate osteoarthritis. If not, we’d keep looking and try something else.

I gave him a pill before we went to bed and he woke up 9 hours later acting like a puppy again. He wasn’t just feeling better, he was feeling FAN-FREAKIN-TASTIC! The transformation was pretty dramatic. I’d forgotten how much he’s slowed down the past couple of years because I see him every day, but wow! That stuff was a miracle drug that seemed to take 5 or 6 years off his life. No joke. We were thrilled! He was running around and wrestling with the cats again and hopping around. It was awesome. He took it for five great days and then had to come off so they could test and get a baseline for liver and kidney function.

Within a couple days of being off of it, he was acting old and creaky again, so the medication was definitely STAYING. They did the tests and prescribed some more pills. Well, on day 3, he woke up fine. He went outside, horsed around, ate breakfast—everything was perfectly normal. I came out of my office around 2 or so to eat lunch and noticed that he wouldn’t go get his food bowl (which he’s done since he was a puppy). He just kind of kept walking in a circle like he couldn’t figure out which way to go. I was annoyed and got it for him. Put the bowl on the floor and noticed that he wouldn’t walk straight towards it. He walked on a certain side of the kitchen along the cabinets, and no amount of cajoling would get him to come over to the pantry.

I told Brian (who coincidentally happened to be home at the time), that Cheeto was acting really weird. I made a mental note to keep an eye on him and continued eating my lunch.

Ten minutes later, he started walking towards the dining room table and bumped into it. I dropped a couple bites on the floor for him, and he couldn’t find them. By this time, I was getting really concerned. I pointed to it and said “Cheeto, they’re right there, honey. RIGHT THERE.” I did it again. And again. Each time he couldn’t find what I was dropping.

“He can’t see,” I said, and started to panic. “He can’t see!”

Brian got up and walked across the room and called for Cheeto. He turned around but didn’t look at Brian. Brian walked closer. Still, nothing. I saw his eyes were REALLY cloudy. My poor, poor baby…

I immediately rushed him to the vet. I kept thinking it HAD to be a side effect of the NSAID. My usual vet wasn’t there, so it was a new lady who knew absolutely nothing about us or Cheeto. Fabulous. She told us that blindness was not a reported side effect of that drug. They ran a few tests on his eyes and told us that the pressure in both of his eyes was really high. They prescribed some eye drops to reduce the pressure. Then she said at some point we were going to have to take him to an opthamologist.

I said “Okay, so why aren’t we just going there now?”

She said that we could, and left the room to call him with the referral. She came back and said he wanted to see Cheeto right away, that he was concerned that it happened so suddenly and in both eyes. And because it was over an hour away and we wouldn’t get there until after 5, that we’d be charged an “after hours fee”. Okay, fine. That sucks, money is tight, but no expense has ever been spared for my little orange buddy and time is of the essence when it comes to eye issues.

So we rush up to the Overland Park opthamologist, who runs more tests: complete loss of vision in right eye but can see shadows in his left eye; normal eye pressures in dogs shouldn’t exceed 25, and Cheeto’s were at 43 (right) and 41 (left). They administered eye drop after eye drop while we tried to keep the baby entertained and tried desperately not to think about how sad it would be if Cheeto lost all of his vision, or how scared he must’ve been to wake up and suddenly not be able to see. It was all so sudden. It came out of NOWHERE.

Test pressures. More drops. Retest pressures. Eventually, the pressures started dropping. He explained to us that the sudden onset of glaucoma was secondary to inflammation caused by some other systemic issue. He was concerned about his lungs (of course, he has chronic bronchitis that we’ve had to deal with for several years now) and wanted to keep him overnight in emergency care. I asked if he took Cheeto’s labored breathing out of the picture—because I know Cheeto’s lung issues are chronic—would the eye pressures necessitate overnight care? He said no, provided the pressures were dropping. Which they were. So we refused to leave him. He’d be far more comfortable at home. I can’t imagine going blind, getting poked and prodded at the vet’s, and THEN being left there overnight? No freakin’ way.

So, we brought him home with three different eye drops, a pill, and strict instructions, which we followed.

The next morning, Cheeto thankfully woke up with vision in his left eye restored. He wasn’t bumping into things and could find whatever you dropped on the floor (provided it wasn’t on his right side). What a relief! So I took him to our vet clinic to recheck pressures and get our regular vet up to speed on what had happened and figure out where to go from there.

The pressure in the left eye was completely back to normal (which would explain why he could see out of that eye again). The right eye had remained unchanged, which was disappointing, but at least it wasn’t worsening. We spoke at length about all the inflammation that was going on, and what her method was going to be for trying to locate what was going wrong, etc.

First we’re going to do a full blood panel and see if that tells us anything. Cheeto is actually at the vet right now getting that done—I will pick him up later this afternoon. It’ll take a few days to get the results back on that. If we don’t figure out anything obvious from that, we may have to proceed with a chest x-ray and/or a sonogram on his belly to look for “masses”. Read: tumors. I immediately teared up when she said that, because seriously… what are we going to do if he has one? He’s 12 years old. I’m not like I’m going to subject him to chemotherapy and radiation, you know what I mean? All of it will need to be discussed, but I couldn’t even let myself go there. I can’t.

My special little puppy

This little furry creature has been my constant little companion for the past 12 years. I’ve had him since he was only a few weeks old and was so small his little butt fit in the palm of my hand. He peed all over the floor, knocked over trash cans while I was at work and chewed up all my leather shoes.

He’s lived with me in Iowa, Missouri, New York, and Kansas and has traveled thousands and thousands of miles. He was my baby long before I had a human baby or even a husband to consider making a baby with. I’ve had him since I was 21 years old… I simply cannot imagine my life without him. I’ve HAD no life without him; he’s been here with me every step and misstep of my entire adult life.

I often wake up in the middle of the night and just check to make sure he’s still breathing. I’ve always worried I was going to lose him, even when he was tiny and healthy and nothing was wrong—my love for him was so intense I was just convinced that the universe was going to snatch him away from me. (I still feel that way, by the way. About him, about Brian, about Jack. But it’s not as bad as it used to be, and I try to suppress it.)

Needless to say, the thought of something happening to him… the thought of him suffering in any way, or being in chronic pain… I.CAN’T.GO.THERE. If I do, I fear I will lose it and never come back.

The vet tried to alleviate my fears by telling me it was only one of a hundred possible scenarios, and not all tumors are malignant. In fact, the one most common in older dogs is NOT malignant and will not take their life. It simply grows at the base of their brain and causes their glands to go wonky and produce a bunch of chemicals that need to be dealt with with drug therapy. So I’m hoping THAT is what they find, if anything. Ideally, these drops will clear everything up and everything will be fine, but… realistically, we all know something bad caused this to happen. Now we’re just waiting to find out HOW bad that something is.

Please keep my Cheetokins in your thoughts and prayers.