Site moving

Hello!!

I am moving this blog to my main site.

The new link is: http://www.peargirly.com/k9epilepsy/

Unfortunately, there's an update there as well...2013 has not been good to the puppa.

Hope to see you at the new site!!

10/22/12–Grand Mal Seizure

Wow. It has been a WHILE since I have had to update this blog!!

That is an AWESOME thing!!

Unfortunately, Topaz’s 511 (!!!) day seizure free streak was broken this morning at approx 8:30am.

I was at work so I don’t know the details, but my husband said he wasn’t vocal, didn’t wet himself, and snapped out of if pretty quickly. When I got home from work he was waiting for me – as usual – excited to see me, – as usual – and seems a bit more anxious than normal…which is normal after a seizure.

Nothing has changed that I know of…maybe he got in to something or maybe it was just time.

Will keep an eye on him…but planning to carry on as normal!

05/30/11–Grand Mal Cluster

I have not had to write for a long time. 274 days to be exact!!!

I don’t count the focal seizure as a seizure, but if I did it’s been over 100 days since then as well.

Around 3:00 pm on Memorial Day Topaz came to me in the computer room and had a grand mal seizure. He got through that one and went right into a second one. He was wedged in a not good area and I was sitting in my desk chair and couldn’t really get to him very well so I am not sure if he peed on himself or not. And being that it’s so hot out, I didn’t let him out right away.

My husband was outside and I needed his help so it was kind of chaotic but we got his cocktail in him and will give him another valium and two whole PB tonight when I give him his pills.

I cannot think of any triggers although we’ve had some wonky weather lately and it was really warm today. I washed the bedding on our bed. He may have gotten into the cat food a few times. And we switched to 1 pack of turkey meat – instead of chicken. Not sure about a trigger. Could be a number of things, we’ve actually been living life lately and not worrying about triggers…isn’t that how it’s supposed to be?

I will say this, the post ictal stage has been rough…he has wandered around for most of the night, been SUPER clingy, and even came to me at one point when I was SURE he was about to seize again…he didn’t, thankfully, but he was totally acting like he was going to.

Hopefully he will be better tomorrow.

02/10/2011–Focal Seizure

I believe Topaz had what is called a Focal or Partial seizure tonight. I was laying in bed and I thought I could feel him shaking or shivering. He’s done this before, so I really didn’t think anything of it.

I called him up closer to me and noticed his head was kind of bobbing and he had that far away look in his eyes. He also seemed to get a little rigid like he was going into a Grand Mal seizure.

I got really worried because I was alone and he was on our bed and I wasn’t ready to deal with a seizure alone so I texted my husband to come home.

I observed him on the bed for a short time and decided to give him his typical after seizure cocktail just in case this was a type of seizure. While I was getting that together I grabbed my camera and took a little video. He didn’t look like he was in any immediate distress and was responding to his name and everything so I gave our other dog some ice cream and let his melt for a minute in some warm water before mixing in the rest of the ingredients (valium, PB and rescue remedy).

Here’s the video:

I posted this video on Facebook and also asked in the Epil-K9 and people who responded do believe it was a focal seizure.

My husband did come home as requested – thank you, honey! – and he called the vet on the way. They said that we did everything they would do and for us to just watch him. If it gets worse to bring him in. We didn’t have to take him in, but I was ready to!

Topaz slept for a bit and when it was time for his night pills he was still a bit shaky so I gave him some more valium and his regular PB dose and then we went to bed.

He was really clingy and needy for most of the night, sleeping right on me for a long time (not his usual). But he did well through the night with this episode not escalating to anything more.

He went 164 days without a seizure, which is just AWESOME! And I am not totally resetting his clock now, but starting a new countdown from this episode.

Other than this, everything has been great. I suspect he got into the cat food once in the past week, but besides that, all has been normal.

We have to take him to the new vet next week or the week after for a blood draw. I’m hoping that will go off without a hitch. The vet is not his favorite place to be! I will update again after the appointment.

Updates: Boarding and More Fleas!

I haven’t updated in a while…which in this case is ALWAYS a good thing! But thought I should because some things have happened that are blog-worthy! No seizures though, THANK GOD!

It’s been 78 days since Topaz’s last seizure. You’ll have to trust me, I haven’t found a good ticker yet. I need to look again. I do have an app on my phone that has the countdown and actually one right next to it with the moon cycle too, just for comparison.

Since my last update my husband and I have vacationed to and returned from Walt Disney World! We were gone for 10 days and had to board the dogs. Because Topaz is epileptic, the dogs are raw fed and the stress of being boarded could potentially trigger a seizure, AND we’ve never boarded them before…we had to call kennels/boarding places, explain the situation and see if they would take our dogs. Shots or the lack of shots in Topaz’s case were also an issue.

So, after about 10 phone calls we finally decided to send them to “Siesta Canine Camp” a kennel in Farmington Hills, MI. The owners live on the property, which was a definite plus and they weren’t too expensive…AND they were willing to deal with giving meds and the raw food. My husband went and toured the kennel and talked with the owner and we booked them for the trip!

With that out of the way, we continued to plan for our trip and pack and everything. My husband called the kennel to see how they wanted us to package the food and good thing he did because we never would have known that they had new owners! Ugh! So I was pretty confident about it and now they have new owners. It was too late to make any changes, so we just got the dogs ready and dropped them off.

I was pretty leery because the woman there was leery of the food/medication situation. She wanted to give Topaz the medication to ensure he got it, we told her this was pretty close to impossible with Topaz, but we just told her to do whatever they were comfortable with doing.

I expected to be upset when we dropped them off but I really wasn’t. I think I was just stressed and ready to go on vacation and they seemed to be in good hands…plus they went into the kennel well. And so we left them there…for 10 days…MY BABIES!!

We called and checked up on them and they were doing great! We’ve never kenneled them before but we would DEFINITELY go back there. They were changing their name to something else, and are getting a website together and everything so as soon as they do I will be putting them on this site. I’d recommend them to anyone. It was a great experience and after a couple calls we realized that the pups were in good hands and that’s all we can ask for!

Plus, Topaz made it through being kenneled and us being gone SEIZURE FREE! And that, in itself, it awesome!

Of course, when we got home we noticed all animals were itching and I found a flea on one of the cats…so we got some more Advantage and put that on the zoo and we seem to be flea free once again. We may need another application to be completely rid of those little buggers, but we’re on top of it!

So those are the updates. Topaz is still a crazy boy and everything is going well at our house!

Moon

I have always wondered if the moon played a part in Topaz’s seizures. Well I got an app on my phone to look the phases of the moon up.

Here they are:

May 14, 2006 - 2:00am - GM    full moon

May 16, 2007 - 2:00am - GM  new moon

July 15, 2007 (2) - GM  new moon

July 25, 2007 - GM  waxing gibbous

November 19, 2007 - 4 Clusters - GM   waxing gibbous

November 29, 2007 - GM  waning gibbous

February 3, 2008 - 6:00am - 3 Clusters - GM  waning crescent 

February 3, 2008 - 10:21am - GM   waning crescent

April 28, 2008 - 6:08am - GM   third quarter moon

February 16, 2009 - 1:40pm (2) GM   third quarter moon

May 30, 2009 - 8:15am - GM  first quarter moon

July 12, 2009 - 8:35pm - GM   waning gibbous

July 12, 2009 - 11:15pm - GM   waning gibbous

July 13, 2009 - 11:30pm (2) GM n  waning gibbous

September 12, 2009 - 7:44am (2) GM    third quarter moon

March 30, 2010 - 2:09am - GM   full moon

August 30, 2010 - 1:32pm - GM   waning gibbous

Interesting.

Lepto Shot & Grand Mal – 8/30/10

Yeah, you read the title right! Ugh…

Ok first the Lepto shot, because I said I was going to write more about it.

We live in a city that is infested with rats. We had to call an exterminator ourselves because we had them in our crawl space…the rats were taking garbage out of our kitchen trash can under the sink and dragging it into the wall. YUCK! Gross, I know! So we called an exterminator and things have been good since.

Last week, a local news station ran this story and this video about Leptospirosis. Leptospirosis is a bacterial infection spread by the urine of rodents and other similar animals. Dogs here are dying from this after eating grass that’s been urinated on or drinking water that’s been urinated in.

Anyway, because of this we decided to get both dogs vaccinated for Lepto. Like I said above, our city is infested so I would rather be safe than sorry.

Onyx’s went off without a hitch and actually so did Topaz’s. We took both of them to different vets, both new vets. The one we took Topaz to we will be taking him to again. It was such a different vet experience than we’re used to! The normal vet usually has us put a muzzle on him and they’ve never actually examined him. The new vet got down and looked him all over and everything, and even gave him the shot in the room. I was very impressed.

Things were fine until this afternoon. I wasn’t home, so this is per my husband but he said Topaz was sleeping on the couch and started seizing.

Grand Mal like always.

He foamed at the mouth but did not pee on himself and my husband said it was very quick, like 30 seconds and really mild. He came around afterwards and he gave him our usual “after seizure cocktail”. Of course he stumbled around a bit, but he’s pretty much back to normal now.

The only think I can think of that was different is that dam shot. I don’t know if when they get vaccs and are going to have a seizure from them if they are immediate or take time usually. I just can’t help but think that the shot is to blame.

I can’t even say stress was the trigger – he went through all that tooth stuff with multiple vet appointments and surgery…and not one seizure.

Of course, I’ll never know…and this seizure broke a 153 day streak. Resetting the countdown clock…