Jamie leapt out of bed at 7:30am -ish and yelled my name, I was still dead asleep. Gracie was making the same sounds that she makes when she's playfully rubbing her back on her bed, except somehow Jamie knew it wasn't the case this time. Gracie was already foaming at the mouth, and her back legs were kicking. Since she hadn't had any seizures in over 15 months, we have been steadily decreasing her Phenobarbital dose every month for the past few months [under the veterinarian's guidance, of course], with the intention of eventually stopping medication altogether. I guess we've just discovered her lowest therapeutic dose is more than 16.2mg twice a day. As seizures go, this was a mild one. It seemed like she was still semi-conscious and it only lasted a minute or so. She recognized us immediately after, and tried to stand up but fell, and did the baby deer trying to walk thing for a few minutes. She's still recovering right now, she drank a lot of water and threw it all up, is a little uncertain in her steps, and not listening to commands very well. We'll give the vet a call when they open at 9am.
UPDATE: The vet doesn't think there's a need to change her dose just yet. He wants to look for "trends" first, so we are just waiting to see if Gracie has any more seizures before we switch it up. Meanwhile, our girl is doing just fine, behaving normally and just as whiny as ever. :)
How strange. Cooper just had a seizure (his first & hopefully only) on Monday night, which immediately made me think of you guys & Gracie. I figured I'd check the page to read up on your experiences a few years back. We took Cooper to the emergency vet, ran blood tests & everything came back normal. They kept him for observation for 24 hours & no further signs. They said based on his age (2.5) it could just be a flukey, one-time thing. We are keeping our fingers crossed. I hope both of our babies feel better!
ReplyDeleteAww, poor Cooper... I remember our vet telling us that dogs, if epileptic, usually start getting seizures when they're younger, so they were concerned that Gracie got her first one when she was the ripe old age of 6. Even though the MRI was expensive, it gave us peace of mind that she didn't have any tumors, and it's just idiopathic epilepsy. Hopefully it's nothing serious with Cooper... Make sure to write down the date of the seizure, and how long you think it lasted, and the severity. Fingers crossed that he doesn't get any more seizures, but if he does, remember to actually time it. Vets like to have a record of that info, and as our new vet says, look for "trends". And if Cooper needs to go on meds, our vet tells us there are more effective meds with less side effects on the market nowadays; Phenobarbital is bad for the liver but since Gracie has been on Pb all this time, we don't want to switch her to a new thing. Keep us posted!
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