An Update on Sadie

As I write this, Sadie is curled under the desk at my feet - something she has not done in almost a month. It started with her not eating very much. We know from Adler that not eating is a sure sign that something is wrong if it persists. A week or so after she stopped eating, we noticed a gradual weakness in her back legs. It was growing difficult for her to get up and just move around in general. She wouldn't get up when people came over and she basically stayed in the same spot in our family room all day. Then when we were in Michigan for 10 days she started limping and not wanting to put pressure on one of her back legs. She didn't have any traction on our hardwood floors so she didn't want to move there either. I called our vet when we got back home and they evaluated her but really wanted her to go see a specialist in the city who sounded familiar to me. Once I looked up where they were, I knew why. Adler had been there 2-3 times when we lived in the city. Once for gas bubbles in her stomach and another two times for her seizures. I called. They asked if I was setting up an appointment for Adler and I politely said, "um, no, she'd be almost 15 at this point. She passed away." I guess they can't assume. At any rate, I got her an appointment a few days later and cleared all of our schedules so we could take her to the city. I made the appointment for 9am because who knew how long we were going to be there and I really needed to be home by 6pm for my kids' practices.

We got there. They evaluated her. I talked to the neurologist who recommended an MRI (her second one and not even 3.5 years old yet) after they did more evaluation with an orthopedic doctor. So we went ahead with the MRI. They put her under and she did great. I'm glad we did the MRI though otherwise we'd be guessing at what was going on with her. Here's what we found out:

• She has another compression point in her 5/6 vertebrae. She previously had surgery on the compression in the 6/7 vertebrae. We thought it didn't work but it's likely that her new compression point negated the benefit of the surgery for her.
• She has orthopedic disease which is basically osteoarthritis in her hips and knees (this is likely what contributed to her pain= not eating and part of the weakness we saw in her back legs).
• She's prone to chronic ear infections. And had to get her ears packed again (three times in about 1.5 years) with a healing ointment pack. 
• She had recent trauma to her spinal cord. We don't know what happened as she didn't fall or we didn't see her hit anything but it could have been something as simple as extending her neck the wrong way (for patients already with Wobbler's this can happen).

We needed to come up with a plan and we decided to get her back to where she was before the trauma and osteoarthritis kicked in. And we're doing it with medical management for now. She takes more pills than my dad but they seem to be working. After 24 hours, she was back to her usual self. She got up (albeit slowly). She came to visit me in the office tonight. She ate her food and was interested in table food again (a sure sign that she's feeling better considering she's lost about 7 pounds in 3 weeks). She's getting stronger, slowly but it's going to be a slow process because she needs to rest for 4-5 weeks from the trauma on her spinal cord to heal.

So that's the latest on my 3 year old baby. I'm glad she's on the mend and not in so much pain anymore. She's too young for that!

My baby! So tired!

Sadie's meds!