Bryan is sick again.
Waiting to be admitted to hospital.
I realise that I didn’t write about Bryan’s previous episode of sickness,but in a nutshell he was diagnosed as having juvenile onset polyarthritis after developing extreme sensitivity all over his body and walking lamely. He was sent home with a course of steroids, which he finished, but the pain and lameness came back. So we took him back to the vet, who prescribed a second round of stronger steroids over a long period. We thought that solved things, until he developed diarrhoea, lethargy, fever and a lack of appetite last weekend. It was the Labour Day holiday and the vet clinics were not open, so we waited till the next day, a Sunday, to take him to a vet near our house.
The vet sent Bryan home with medicines all calculated to treat a probable case of bacterial infection, which might have been caused by an insect bite on his left hind leg which had pus and swelling. Again, we thought that settled things. Until he started bleeding from his penis. Now I don’t know about you, but blood coming out of that orifice is a rather scary thing to behold. At first we thought that the blood was coming from the lanced insect bite which had smeared against his unit. That was put paid to when giant clots started oozing out. K put him back into his crate and rushed back to the clinic, where a blood test showed that he was most likely suffering from canine babesiosis. The vet gave us the option of taking Bryan home with some medicines to help him recover, or to take him to hospital. I chose the second option, so poor K drove Bryan to Mount Pleasant Animal Hospital.
Bryan was admitted for observation. The vet who saw him said she would try to trace the cause of the bleeding, stop it, and try to figure out what was going on. Everything had to be done in stages because his red blood cell count was low and his white blood cell count was high. His platelet count was also abnormal – all these things had to stabilise before they could do anything else.
Today is Day 4 of Bryan’s hospitalisation, and the vet finally has an explanation. Although there are traces of babesia in his blood, that’s not what’s been making Bryan bleed. The B-boy has von Willebrand Disease , which is common in corgis as well as numerous other dog breeds. His is Type 1, which is usually mild. It probably flared up because of the steroids he was given for the polyarthritis, which this vet says is a misdiagnosis because the pain and stiffness was not accompanied by joint swelling. vWD can also cause joint stiffness when there is bleeding into the joints, so that could have been the reason Bryan was lame earlier.
Anyway, now that we finally know what is wrong, we can move on to finding out what needs to be done in terms of treatment. Prevention is pretty easy – because vWD is a clotting disorder, we simply have to minimise possibilities of Bryan getting injured in any way that might cause bleeding. The penile bleeding earlier had been caused by a tiny nick on his penile shaft (goodness knows where he got that from). The vet was puzzled to learn that Bryan has already been neutered; the standard blood clot test that is done before the surgery would have shown that his blood is slower to clot (4 minutes) than is usual in dogs (3 minutes). To put it simply, it’s amazing he didn’t bleed profusely during the surgery.
I hope he is well enough to be discharged soon. He threw up twice this morning and there was some blood, so the vet wants to stabilise his tummy before releasing him to us. We miss him at home, and it’s also a huge expense to have him in hospital for so long. It’s not so much the daily ward charges itself, but all the tests and procedures they do to him!
Comments (2)
Oh the poor boy. I hope he will be discharged soon.
Not sure which vet you go to but have you tried AVRC at Balestier? We brought Moochie to Dr JP Ly when his CRF was first diagnosed, and in addition to the usual preventative measures, the vet also gave some holistic treatments which have – I think – helped keep Moochie’s readings within the normal range.
We were taking Bryan to ARC before all this happened – would have taken him there when it did but they were closed on Labour Day and Sunday. After he’s discharged, we’ll probably go back to ARC.