Well, I wanted to touch base on the status of Benjamin’s medical issues. (He signed the HIPAA waiver, so I have permission for those that were concerned about me infringing upon his legal rights.);)
After much back and forth between our usual vet and the eye vet(s), the current diagnosis is a combination of dry eye and allergies. I say eye vets because we have now seen each of the 3 specialists that practice at the AVS location we visit.
Benny is being medicated for seasonal allergies (he pops a human Claritin daily) and he will go the end of this week for one more trip to the eye specialist to get his 6 month treatment plan. His maladies have seemed to have settled down. No face swelling. The licking and scratching have appeared significantly less. The true bonus is that his chest x-rays came back normal.
The unusual thing about the diagnosis of dry eye, is it is the same problem Luna suffers from, but not really the same at all. Benny produces tears. Luna does not produce tears on her own. Benny’s problem is the quality of his tears. Thus, even though he produces tears, his eyes would still be considered dry. Seemed very odd to me at first but I guess I get it now.
So, this is where we are with Baby Benny. I must say that I have also been living up to most of my end of the deal with better upkeep of the ear cleaning and wrinkle cleaning. Toenail trimming, while better is still a sore spot. During his procedure of the anesthetized ear cleaning, the vet saved me some specimens of what he removed.
Funny, even though his ears are clean, he doesn’t seem to listen any better. He definitely has very selective hearing, I would say. He is continues to live up to his aging man nickname of Solsey Benny! (Of course this is said the way we used to say Solsey Baby!)
From time to time the pugs have a little fireside chat amongst themselves. Benny didn't go full howl on this one, but you can hear a little bit of his patented howl. And the pug with the menacing growl heard in the background. Well, that's Luna.
It is that time of the year in FL where the weather is much friendlier to pugs. As a result, Henry loves to hang out in the yard. And, as you can see, he really makes himself comfortable while he is out there.
As I read the comments for the From Zero to Twenty blog post, I was somewhat surprised. There were many well wishers and congratulators offering OBP kudos for Luna’s success in her tear production and eye health. It really got me thinking.
I guess we should be more proud of this than we are. When Luna started as a zero, we just sort of expected that in no time she would be fine. That we would just find the right vet, follow the prescribed guidelines and before we knew it, she’d be fine.
So, while that is what we did and this was the end result, we really hadn't taken any time to reflect or evaluate just how amazing this result is or how far she has actually come. And since we just assumed our efforts would pay off, it never even crossed our minds that she was "beyond repair". So, we never then appreciated her progress.
Thinking about how far Luna has come, what popped out first was a memory of her first trip to the dog beach. The boys were so excited,but she was a nervous wreck. The boys ran scampering down the boarded walkway and thumped down the steps leaping down the oversized last step down to the beach itself.
Then there was Luna. She anxiously coursed her way down the boarded path, screeched her brakes at the top of the steps and then reluctantly forged her way down the steps feeling each step as she plopped down them. When she got to the very last step which was a good foot and half from the beach, she took a leap of faith which did not pay off. She immediately face planted into the sand. This caused her whole face (eye balls included) to be covered in sand. She was a mess. She was frantic. She couldn’t see, was covered in sand, completely uncomfortable and at the time she still did not trust us very much.
Anyway, since her eyes were so dry getting the sand off them was a task in and of itself. We did manage to wash away the grit and she ended up having an ok time but it is definitely one of those moments that sticks with a person.
There was also the growth that she had on her eye that needed to be removed. And there was also at least 10 different combinations of eye meds that we tried until we found the (DUH) winning recipe. We kept spreadsheets so that we could track of it all. Now we have the routine memorized. We used to have to go back to the eye vet every 3 months. This visit they told us that they won’t need to see her for another 10-12 months! That is truly incredible.
Thanks to the OBP readers for their support and positive commentary in pointing out some of the things that we simply have taken for granted in the OBP household. Without your kind words, I likely would not have taken the time to reflect and be proud of the improvements little Luna has made.
Well, I always like to preface a long blog with the following: pull up a chair; it’s going to be a doozy. It’s going to be a long story (even though I am trying to make is short).
Before leaving for vacation, Benjamin was experiencing what I considered to be allergies. He had been licking his feet, scratching his ears and rubbing his face into the back of the sofa. We had noticed that one of his lower eyelids was a little droopy and that one of his jowls was a bit puffy and hanging lower than the jowl on the other side of his face. We didn’t think that much about it as initially we thought the face swelling had to do with his dental issue that we tended to before we left on vacation. Then, while in the mountains of North Carolina, Benjamin did not experience any of these things. This furthered my suspicion that Benny has allergies. This suspicion was even greater after we arrived home and his eyes got all goopy and he started squinting. He also had swollen wrinkles, and that eye droop was back. He was in such rough shape that I had to take him to the vet. The vet noticed not one but two ulcers on his corneas. (One on each cornea, that is.) The vet gave us some drops and said to come back in a week if he hadn’t improved; and stressed that if he was worse that could be indicative of a more severe problem.
Benny was better in a week. No worries. Well, about another week the later, the same symptoms start cropping up again. This time, since I already have a trip to the eye specialist for Luna planned, I call and ask if I can tack Benjamin on to the appointment so we can get a better idea of what is going on with him. “Of course,” they share. So, I tote both Benjamin & Luna to the eye specialist (which, as you know is no small jaunt; it’s about 50 miles away).
So, there we are at the eye vet with Benny. He has an ulcer in his left eye. They are of the mind that it is self inflicted. They ask the questions which demonstrate my poor supervisory skills:
Has he been scratching his face? (Duh, yeah)
Has he been running his face into the carpet or into furniture to scratch? (Um, of course)
Then embarrassingly, I try to conceal his mile long toe nails on top of it all….
So, the eye specialist loads him up with a variety of drops (3 different ones) and a gel (just one). Shortly after that, though, comes the icing on the cake: the cone! (I guess, I should have said the ice cream came next because the cone would make more sense to go with ice cream than cake.) Well, Benny can barely make it around the house and neighborhood coneless let alone wearing a satellite dish around his neck. Good grief.
Yet, home we go with Benny, the coned dog, and Luna who is just happy as a peach not be the wearer of the cone.
Oh, holy cow. I almost forgot one of the best parts…Benjamin has to go back the next day for a follow up! Really? Hate to sound like a whiney baby that won’t do anything for their kids, but we did just get back from vacation so I have taken a bit of time off work lately…and now I need to take back to back trips to the vet where each round trip is at least 3 hours? Aw geez.
In the meantime, Benjamin had another appointment that afternoon with our regular vet about the droopy/swollen face issue. The eye specialist could not see any link to the squinty/goopy eye to the other maladies. I had updated our primary vet on the status of Benny and shared what the eye vet had to say. After some consideration and an exam, the primary vet, told me to ask the eye vet if she would consider a condition called Horner's Syndrome. Horner's Syndrome is not a disease it is more like a combination of symptoms that when linked together can be indicative of a number of diseases/conditions. So, the most simple is no known cause, to relatively simple such as a middle ear infection or severely problematic of chest or brain tumors.
With that philosophy, the primary vet attempts to examine Ben's ears. Well, lovely, they are filled with impacted fur. So, now this is even more where the "I'm a bad mom" guilt sets in. His ears are filthy. So filthy actually that he needs to be mildly sedated to have them cleaned. So, the ear cleaning is scheduled, as well as a toe nail clipping and a head/chest X-ray.
Here is my promise for the future:
I will be a better mom about cutting his toenails (even though they grow twice as fast as Luna’s & Henry’s); I will be sure he wears the cone when needed so as not have him scratch his face so much that he puts an eye out (for you "Christmas Story" fans, that should raise a giggle) and I will be sure to stay on top of his ear cleaning (even though he is by far the worst at this task---as the primary vet put it during the exam when speaking to Ben, he said, "Boy, you strong. Like bull.")
He definitely has very selective hearing, I would say. He is continues to live up to his aging man nickname of Solsey Benny! (Of course this is said the way we used to say Solsey Baby!)
