An Eye for an Eye

Poor Maisie. When last I blogged, she was Conehead, and well, she still is, but with much trauma from then to now.

What I thought was "doggy pink eye" when it started, was not. On March 8, she began showing symptoms of squinting, pawing at her eye and having discharge. I took her to the vet the very next day. He diagnosed a corneal ulcer (an injury to her eye), gave us eye drops and ointment and sent us on our way with instructions to come back in 4 days. Tim took her back then and it had not healed as he had hoped. During both visits, he tested her both for the corneal ulcer and for glaucoma, but she was negative for that. Having not seen much improvement at this point, he consulted a veterinary ophthalmologist (I didn't even know there was such a specialty for animals) who said it sounded like uveitis, which is a generalized inflammation. The vet then prescribed a six-day course of an anti-inflammatory medication. By Day 3, she was looking almost normal again, so I did not return to the vet right away. However, by Day 6 of the medication, her eye was looking just as bad as it had in the beginning and was bulging and cloudy. I called the vet back (on a Saturday) and he said he had done all he knew to do since he is not a specialist and he would call the ophthalmologist again on Monday and let me know. Well, he didn't, so on Monday afternoon, I called the ophthalmologist office myself and made arrangements to bring her in the next day.

That was last week and the news wasn't good. The new doctor examined her and said he saw no signs of a corneal ulcer at this point (it might've healed) and thought there was little hope of saving her vision or her eye. At this point, she DID have glaucoma, but it was secondary to whatever had caused all this to begin with, and they didn't know what that was. The original vet had not found any indication of glaucoma and it is reversible if you catch it early enough, so this doctor "blitzed" her with six medications to try to bring down the pressure in her eye and hopefully save her vision. I faithfully administered eye drops, ointments and hid tablets in dog food and took her back to the ophthalmologist two days later. She was examined again and this time he said he could detect no vision in that eye at all, the inflammation was unchanged, even on medication, and the pressure was normal, but only because she was on medication. The outlook was very bleak and so he discussed options with me, should there be no more improvement. The build-up of pressure in her eye is very painful unless controlled by medication and she couldn't stay on medication forever. If she indeed had no vision in her eye, there was just no point, so he would remove her eye. (I know, I know, it's so sad) He could either remove it and sew her eye shut or remove it and insert a prosthetic eye. What modern medical technology can do! As having a prosthetic eye was only $200 more than not, I voted to go that route. She will look more "normal" that way and be easier on her as well. And, when your total doggy medical expenses are going into the thousands at this point, what's a couple of hundred?

I like the ophthalmologist very much and trust him. I found out he is on the faculty of the veterinary school in our state that's a couple of hours away and commutes in three days a week to this office. I think he must know what he's doing. He's also very compassionate; he suggested we continue the medication for another four days over the weekend, just to see if anything at all improved, even though we both suspected it wouldn't.

And it didn't.

So yesterday, my poor, sweet, three year old Maisie had her eye removed and a prosthetic one put in it's place. We still have no idea what caused this, but tissue samples were sent off to a lab, so hopefully we'll have an answer next week. Her other eye is completely fine and I really hope it stays that way.