Update from the Nursing Home
Posted by Lynnster on June 17, 2008
You’ll never believe this, but remember a couple of weeks ago when my Beagle, Lula, had just died, and while she was sick, Dobie had this sort of stroke-like episode? Which wasn’t a stroke, but was canine old age vestibular disease, which has sort of stroke-like symptoms, and in any case, was pretty frightening.
Early Monday morning while it was still dark, my eldest cat, Little, developed the same thing. But the feline version, of course. She’s 16 or 17 (I can’t ever remember which of those two years she arrived as a baby).
Much like with the dog version, they say it usually improves in 2-3 days to a couple of weeks, and she’s already improved a bunch from how she was yesterday. Dobie’s a big dog who’s all legs, and Little’s a pretty small cat, but really her situation was much more frightening and her symptoms much more dramatic.
With Dobie, he had been fine all day and evening and then when we all got ready to go outside again that night, he stood up and promptly fell down. With Little, the first thing I noticed was that she was laying oddly on the floor, and at first I thought she’d died. Then when she finally tried to get up and walk – and every time she walked after that – she would hurl herself forward and tumble in a pseudo-forward roll and scare me to death. She even did that jumping in the bathtub, and while trying to jump out of her (relatively shallow) litter box.
She didn’t have the nystagmus (rapid back and forth eye movement) Dobie had for days afterwards, but Dobie didn’t have the dramatic head tilt she did all day yesterday. She still has a little residual tilt – and may continue to – but god, yesterday it was just pitiful.
Dobie’s still having a little trouble maneuvering eating dry dog food – I practically had to hand feed him for over a week to make sure he was getting enough to eat – but Little doesn’t seem to have much motor skill problem in that regard. She’s getting around fine today, just a day later, I haven’t seen her tilt or fall at all today. Dobie is getting around mostly well, except that when he gets in a hurry or has just woken up, he sometimes loses his balance and/or falls.
I’m kinda confused about the fact that in dogs, they say it usually eventually goes away and never comes back, while in cats, most of what I’ve read seems to say they retain some residual effects and that it can flare up again when stressed, so I’m not so sure that might not be true of dogs too.
In any case, I guess it’s a learning process for us all, and I’m glad they’re both probably going to recover just fine more than likely, but gosh, it’s been like a geriatric veterinary nursing home around here for weeks now and I am just plain worn OUT. And can’t believe two of them were stricken with this at the SAME time, and there’s two more elderly cats here (and one other not much of a spring chicken herself), and I’m just, like, oh please, please – no more catastrophes (or dogastrophes) right now, please.
holly said
Oh sweetie. Dorian (my kitty) and I will be thinking about you.