Daisy Has Taken A Turn For The Worse

Daisy has taken a sudden turn for the worse in her heart disease... it appears she has decompensated and is having shortness of breath and acute heart failure. She spent much of the night standing until I figured a way she could lean on some pillows and on me and she finally fell asleep around 3 AM. Her breathing is still too fast and I am trying to get her into the cardiologist.... God has his eye on the sparrow so I know He has His eyes on Daisy too.

Update: 4PM... Daisy is spending the night at the emergency vet.. the same vet that took care of Max during his long illness. The veterinary cardiologist was not in today and could not see her until Monday, but the internal medicine doctors at the emergency place could do the echocardiogram and the lab tests needed. Her heart is really large.. but there doesn't seem to be any pneumonia, tumors in the lungs or elsewhere and it doesn't look like a slam dunk on Cushings with a pulmonary thrombosis either. Her oxygen level was really low so they put her in an oxygen crate and this had helped her breathing already, before I left. She has a cardiomyopathy type of heart failure, no tumor in the heart and no pericardial fluid. Her heart muscle looks to still be functioning fairly well and they think that with some Lasix and another drug, similar to digoxin but less toxic, she might make it over this episode. Cockers tend to respond well and have a pretty good prognosis... perhaps even two to three more years of quality. The medication starts to work in thirty minutes after dosage and I will call in later to check on her. Hopefully, she will be improved and able to be out of the oxygen by sometime tomorrow and can come home.

The workers there remember Max... "the cranky, goofy dog with the squeaky ball in his mouth"... and Daisy is so totally opposite of him.... sweet, cooperative, lets them draw blood, hold her for an echo and chest x-ray and generally prod and poke at will. I hope she can rest better tonight, but I know she must wonder where her "people" are and if we are ever coming back... she's been through this trauma before... at the kill shelter in South Carolina.

Thanks for the thoughts.... Daisy has carved out an even bigger place in my heart than Max did and if she left now, so suddenly, the hole would be impossible to fill.

Update #2 Sunday: Daisy responded well to her therapy and was able to go off oxygen at 5AM on Saturday. I picked her up a little after noon. They did an EKG and found that she also has 2nd degree heart block... which means that her heart is only contracting with every other electrical complex. If it progresses it could lead to sudden death but it does not usually progress and in this case it kept her heart rate from being as high as her respiratory rate and probably helped her heart failure stay compensated for as long as it did. They could put a pacemaker in but she is quite old and that would be difficult for her. Medication that would help would hurt her heart failure... so, we will watch. She had more energy than I have seen in her for quite a while and for a time I thought I might have to crate her to keep her from bounding around too much. After she figured out that everything was in place and this was indeed her place and that all her people were here... including her grandma... she settled down and took her usual naps, ate well and after being carried upstairs in a basket... she slept like a log.. happy to be back on her tempurpedic mattress pad. She goes back in one week to check progress and titrate her meds. Now, we have 1 dog, 1 cat, two humans on multiple meds..... hope I can keep them straight.

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