MySpace-August 5, 2009-Some Things I Thought Of

When on our Mid-West trip, some of us broke away from the group and ate at Arby’s instead of McDonald’s. Gerald and I were the first to get our food and assumed that we were going back to the vans. We started out to the parking lot and realizing no one was following us looked back and found that people were eating inside. Gerald and I decided that we would just sit on the curb and eat in the parking lot like losers waiting for everyone else to finish. While we ate, the seagulls began to swarm and circle above us. I noted this and Gerald and I then talked about how funny it would be if one just swooped down and stole the roast beef sandwich out of my hand. I thought it would be even funnier if it the sandwich was so close to my face that I actually ended up with a bite of feathers instead. It was like a cartoon. It is so funny that cartoon type antics are so ingrained in our heads that it allows us to envision them readily.

While on the trip, I found out that Riley tested at risk/affected for degenerative myelopathy. Degenerative myelopathy (DM) is a disease where the dog is struck with an ascending paralysis. It starts with weakness in the hindlegs followed by inability to use them and then progresses upwards. It is similar to Lou Gehrig’s disease. It has a late onset (like 7 to 11 years old) and is very common in corgis. I had decided to get Riley tested after having a positive patient while on neurology. This makes me really sad. I do realize that it doesn’t mean that Riley will be definitely affected, just that she could be. So for now, I am saving my pennies so that I can afford any further diagnostics if she would start having problems and to buy a puppy wheelchair. If something would happen to Riley though, I know that she could have the potential to help other dogs and even humans with DM.

My mom called me on the last day of the trip to let me know that her cat, Abbie was neurologic that morning. Her initial text didn’t say a lot so I assumed that it must be something like hepatic encephalopathy since Abbie’s liver has been funky for a while now. I did call my mom back and she said that she noticed the cat knuckling over in the hindlimbs that morning and being overall weak. She took the cat to the vet and he offered a referral to Columbia for a workup and potential surgery after some radiographs he took showed bony lesions around the spinal cord. At this point, he must have been thinking about intervertebral disc disease, which is what corgis and long dogs get (and German Shepards, but they get everything). The cat had weak to absent pain sensation in the hindlegs to. However, I first thought of a saddle thrombus even though it wasn’t the classical presentation (ice cold hind limbs, screaming in pain). Mom said that the vet thought there was good blood flow there. Anyway, he took some blood for a thryroid test and to check liver values which were elevated and it did come back that the cat was hyperthyroid. He put the cat on dexamethasone to hopefully alleviate some of the swelling around the spinal cord. Abbie hid under the couch downstairs after coming home and when my mom checked on her later, my mom found her dead. Some other differentials include heartworms (though I don’t know how the hindlimb weakness plays into it) and hyperthyroidism causing heart problems causing hypertension causing clots. This could play into the saddle thrombus as well and I’m pretty sure that kills cats too.

[EDIT-Originally published to Blogger on 8/7/11.]