Meara

[hammondjx]

Thanks! I made a correction to my previous post..I had 6/1/2008, but was really 2009 - but still 8 months is great!

[Mandypop]

That's really good to hear Meara is doing so well!

Good luck for the future.

[hammondjx]

Today is exactly 1 year from when Meara had her last seizure. Hopefully she can continue on this path!

[hammondjx]

So, reading back through some posts, I see it very rare that a dog goes a year without a seizure, even when medicated.

Meara was never "officially" diagnosed with epilepsy - just assumed. She started having seizures after we brought her home from getting spayed (June 2008) - she had seizures very often in the beginning, then they slowly started to fade away. Her last one was in June of 2009.

It's hard to think an injury during the spaying (lack of oxygen to brain) or something of that nature would take a year to heal..but is it possible?

I guess we will just keep her on track with her current meds since she is doing so good, but it makes you wonder...but at this point we are too scared to mess with anything and regress.

thoughts?

[MK's mom]

I understand that you'd love to see Meara off medications because ALL of us at some point are hoping that the seizures will stop and we'll have a normal dog again.

I have a friend whose dog hurt his neck one time (or so she thinks) and he had a few seizures. He was put on Pb and never had another seizure again till he passed away at 12+ years, but the vets didn't want to risk it by taking him off of his Pb!! It IS very odd that your Meara didn't seize till she was spayed, it makes you wonder if someone dropped her at the clinic and injured her or if something happened simultaneously when she was spayed. That's the heartbreak of epilepsy, most of us look for the cause and never find it, but if a dog is seizing SECONDARY to another problem, once the primary problem is resolved the seizures ought to stop.

There was a another poster on here whose dog didn't seize for 8 months and her vet took the dog off of the meds and she went into status and died. If you DO decide to cut back and wean Meara off her medication, do it VERY slowly and wait until a year or better has passed without a seizure. It's a scarey thing to risk because you don't know if that little bit of Pb is keeping her under control or if her episodes have stopped for whatever reason.

[Mandypop]

It's great that Meara has made it a year seizure free. A word of caution though, Poppy made is seizure free for over 2 years and we had even talked about maybe reducing her PB. Sadly, her seizures returned before we reduced Pb. Her seizures were harder to control even with upping Pb, so we had to add on KBR which is doing the trick at the moment. I would leave it a bit more than a year before trying to wean off Pb.

[Apache]

I was all for getting rid of the medication weeks ago. We were seriously contemplating that, but not so anymore. If Epileptic Seizures are anything, they're volatile!

That being said, though, wow, over a year seizure free! That's awesome! Not sure I would want to mess with a good thing, but my opinion today is a little biased,...understandably. Is Meara on large doses of medication?

Brian

[hammondjx]

Well, after almost 16 months without a seizure, we got woken up at 3:30AM to a sound of the past. Meara was laying on floor in bathroom seizure and banging against the sink cabinet. Hard to say how long the seizure lasted, maybe a minute or two. She came out of it OK, wobbly at first but didn't take long to regain her balance. After that she was anxious and barking, so I had to take her down stairs and sleep on the couch so she didn't wake my daughter up.

Just a few minutes ago she had a very minor 5-10 second seizure while sitting next to me.

I believe the problem is, shes on so many medications now that she is getting smart about it and not wanting to eat her food etc.

Previously we would put her pheno & KBr(liquid) in to her food (wet/dry mix) as well as her liver suppliment. I think it got to the point where it tasted so much like medicine she didn't want anything to do with it.

Now we give her all of her pills in cheese and put the KBr(liquid) in with her food still. She would eat most of her food but not all of it. So over the last week it is hard to say if she was getting her medicine consistently, which I think contributed to these recent seizures.

While we were at our in-laws she got in to something in the woods (old scrap foods or something) - took her about two days before she would eat anything, so getting her medicine in her was not easy and where we were did not have a pill popper.

I gave her an extra dose of pheno last night after her seizure, and she got her regular doses this AM in cheese and I put her KBr on just some wet food this morning which she ate it all, so hopefully she will get back on track.

UGH!

[richmauer]

Cheese can get old also. Try one or doses in wet catfood,varying the variety, The cans will last a few days. . It worked for Peanut. Sorry to hear about the reversal. Good luck.

[Apache]

Josh,

Congrats to you and Meara for having one heck of a seizure-free run! Hopefully the next streak will go beyond the previous one. Ideally, hopefully there won't be another time.

As far as giving our guy medication, we really haven't had much difficulty,..thankfully. In the morning, we just open his mouth and place the pills on the back of his tongue and/or down the back of his throat. He didn't much like it at first, but he's come to accept it. In the evening, though, we crush his pills and mix them with two tablespoons of frozen yogourt. This, he looks forward to.

Good luck, and I hope Meara has started another lengthy seizure-free streak!

Brian

[hammondjx]

Thanks for the responses. She had a couple more seizures in the beginning of the week. Generally small chewing gum seizures with no effect. She did have one pretty big seizure that left her hind legs immobile for a few minutes, but she came out of that one ok. We took her to the vet to get updated blood work to see if any adjustments need to be made to her meds and see how her liver is doing.

Been 2 days now without a seizure - hopefully we are on our way to another long seizure-less period.

[Carolyn]

I know how fustrating it is when a long streak is broken. Kiya would sometimes refuse cheese so I use liverworst. It's fattening so I use a very small piece, just enough to cover pills.
For her liquid KBR I had always split her food ration in half, add the kbr then when she finished I would give her the rest of her food. Funny thing was even when I knew she was always eating her food with the medicine I figured I wouldn't have to split it in half anymore. Well when she finished her food she would sit there and wait for the rest. So she will always eat dinner in 2 parts.