Escalating Health Probelms And Our Final Gift Options

[Phoenix19]

Back in September of last year, we took our little boy to the vet because he was chewing on his feet and actually biting his nails down to the quick. Our vet diagnosed him with a bacterial infection and gave him Prednisone and GenOne Spray. His feet did improve somewhat, but not completely. He then started to lose weight dramatically. Another trip to the vet, and this time the vet did lab tests and said he had liver disease. On this visit, our boy was diagnosed with both conjunctivitis and diabetes and was given antibiotic/steroid eye drops. We were giving him two shots a day of 5 units each of Novolin NPH insulin. We bought a glucose monitor that was calibrated for use in dogs and checked him a minimum of twice a day. His blood glucose readings were still sky high (357 to 450). Each time we checked, they were higher than before. Nine days later we were back in because he had developed a cough. The vet gave him clomipramine, Clindamycn drops, and Prednisolone. Two days after that, he had become so dehydrated, the vet gave him fluid therapy. Three days after that, the vet gave us a liter of saline solution to administer to him at home (100 cc every other day). Six days later, the cough was not any better, but was getting worse. The vet said he had emphysema and gave him Torbutrol tabs and a Depo Medrol injection. That night, he hardly slept at all because he was coughing so much. The next day the vet gave him a shot of Diphenhydramine and Dura Pen/Baytrl/Dexat and Diphenhydramine (Banophen) tabs. We were home for about two hours and the whole time the cough was getting worse and our baby was getting weaker. The vet's office said to bring him back out and they would put him in an incubator with oxygen. When we got there, he was so weak he could only lay in the incubator. But as the oxygen built up, he sat up, got a drink of water, and was whining and crying to get out. As soon as the incubator was opened, he started having serious trouble breathing again. The vet gave him a shot of Lasix, a shot of torbutrol, a shot of a sedative, and a shot of a different steroid. He did not respond to any of the medicines and was still fighting hard to breathe. We could not see him suffer like that so we had the vet administer the "easy sleep" for him. We cannot understand (and neither can our vet) what happened and why he started having all of these problems one after the other. If any one has any suggestions I would really appreciate hearing from them. We have three other Poms (one of them is his half-sister) and really do not want to see this happen to them.

Our vet said it "might be an auto-immune disease," but the next day he said it was allergies. Can someone please tell us how we can protect our 3 remaining Poms from a disease when we don't even know what it is.

We (my boyfriend Travis and I) have lost pets before. The first one was to the poisoned recalled dog food. Gypsy was 6 years old and we had to put her to sleep because her kidneys failed. Champagne the next girl to cross the Rainbow Bridge was 9 years old. We had a dental done on her by this same vet and she never came our of the anesthesia. Our vet told us later that she had an enlarged heart, which he had noted earlier in her file, but because he was also dealing with the office dog dying of cancer, he "forgot to check."

So from the same breeder we have gotten four Poms, and only one is alive now. We are watching her like hawks; even to the point of gently shaking her awake when she's asleep to make sure she is still breathing.

If anyone has any ideas or thoughts, we would be grateful for them.

My reaction to all of this is to want to go to sleep and not wake up again. I miss Cinders so very much. He was my baby boy and my Buddy. I promised him that everything would be okay, that mommy would make him better, and now I've failed him. I am almost afraid to hold and play with the other dogs, because I'm afraid I'll kill them too.

All the other pet losses throughout my life have felt different. This one HURTS so much, both inside and out. There are days when I feel like the pain is just unmanageable and will never get any better.