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Poppy- the rest of the story |
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This next part doesn’t make pleasant
reading - there is no happy ending. For those of you with Addisons dogs
please don’t think that early death is the inevitable consequences of the
disease.
POPPY – THE END OF THE LINE It has been nearly six months since Poppy died and since then there has not been a single day I have not wept for her - and for me. I miss her terribly. It’s not that she was an only dog, I have six others, but she was so special. I can still feel her sitting on my knee, I can almost stroke the shape of her ribcage, feel the textures of her coat and draw my fingers over her elegant shapely head. Poor Poppy had a terrible, terrible time. Addisons Disease in an auto-immune condition which means her immune system was compromised. As a consequence she had a persistent ear infection, which, despite the commitment of myself and my vet refused to clear up and eventually mutated into pseudomonas. I had spent months religiously cleaning her ears twice daily, waiting 20 minutes and then putting eardrops in along with various antibiotic combinations that required a chart for me to keep up with them. But this infection did not respond to any antibiotics and continued to worsen and the worry was that it would infect her whole body thus precipitating an Addisonian crisis which ultimately she could not recover from. We had tried everything else and I knew that what the vet had in mind was her last chance and I didn’t want to lose her for the sake of an ear infection. There was only one drug left that this infection might be sensitive to – Gentamicin. This drug has horrendous side-effects and can only be given by injection. In spite of this I urged my reluctant vet to consider using this. So I had to commit myself to two 40 mile round trips to the vet each day with Poppy. I just hoped that the antibiotic would work on the infection before the side-effects took hold and before I collapsed with exhaustion. After five days there was no obvious improvement and Poppy was unhappy but I couldn’t put my finger on the problem. After 7 days I thought there was some improvement but Poppy was unsteady on her feet and had fallen off the settee for no apparent reason. She has also fallen out of the car trying to get out at the vets. This sort of shock could cause a crisi so I had to be even more careful with her. She has also started standing, swaying with her head down and looking really miserable. She wasn’t eating and had lost weight. In the mean time I was exhausted working 10 hour shifts, travelling 70 miles to and from work and making 2 trips to the vet each day. The Gentamicin continued but at one injection per day. Poppy was getting more and more miserable, standing with her legs braced, back dipped, head down and body swaying. She had to be helped in and out to toilet. She couldn’t get in and out of the car and couldn’t get onto the settee without help. My sister is a Pharmacy Technician and she sent me a copy of Mimms – a publication which describes drugs and their side-effects. Gentamicin causes deafness, dizziness, nausea, hallucinations and major organ failure amongst other things. This was why Poppy was standing like she did.
Back at the vets, I had her electrolyte levels checked and she was about to crash into Addisonian crisis so they admitted her and put her on a drip and steroids. I knew she would hate being kennelled at the vets even though they have state of the art facilities and 24 hour staffing and I decided that if I visited her she would think she was coming home and get upset when I left, so I decided not to go in and distress her, but sent in minced chicken and pasta for her to eat. They decided to stop the Gentamicin and the ear infection returned. However, after a couple of days, I had to see her. She was carried in by one of the technicians. She was pleased to see me and waved her tail. I was allowed to take her for a ‘walk’ – she could barely stand. However she seemed to enjoy my company, being stroked and being outside on the grass. They were doing regular blood tests and I was told that her liver and kidneys were failing. They believed the pseudomonas had become systemic although I also suspect that this was an irreversible side-effect of the drug. They called me the next day at work asking me to come in as they thought her time had come. A doggy friend who I work with came with me. I went there prepared for the worst and waited in the consulting room. Then I heard her unsteady footsteps walking towards me and her sad little face appeared in the doorway looking at me, her tail waving. I couldn’t do it. She did not respond to any noises and I believe she had gone deaf. She must have felt abandoned, isolated, ill and in pain – she may also have suffered from hallucinations. I went back later that night to cuddle and pet her and the dreadful look she gave me as I left her in the kennel decided me – I would take her home to die. I didn’t want her last memories to be her time in the vets. Her bloods were done again and she liver and kidney failure. She came home to sleep on my settee during the day and my bed at night. She had to be carried in and out to toilet, but although she wandered to the gate to watch the world go by, she ate nothing and drank only a little electrolyte. A couple of days later I rang the vet first thing in the morning and arranged for her to come out in the late afternoon. I sat with Poppy who was in a deep sleep in a pile of soft duvets – she looked so poorly. I went out the back to let the other dogs out and heard a crash from the living room – I dashed through – Poppy had tried to get off her duvets because I has disappeared and had crashed to the floor. I gently picked her up and took her to the front garden. She staggered round and had a ‘wee’ and went to look through the gate with her tail gently waving.
This exhausted her and I put her, wrapped in a duvet on the settee and cuddled up to her for a while. Eventually, the other dogs had to go out again and whilst I was doing that, she tried to get off the settee and fell in a heap on the floor. I rescued her again. The vet came in the late afternoon and Poppy greeted her with a wagging tail. I kissed her and said goodbye and cried and cried as she slipped away. I still don’t know if this was the right time or the right thing. She had been so determined to get up and be with me, to go out for a ‘wee’ and to watch the world go by through the gate.. It was the hardest decision I have ever made. I have to cling to the words I heard a few weeks late – ‘Better a week to soon than a day too late’- when we take on the responsibility of another life we owe them that courtesy. My immediate reaction was to mate one of Poppy’s sons – Fleet to my bitch Delyth in the hope that I could get myself another Poppy. However, the reason for not doing this originally was because I had discovered that Poppy’s sire had been in a litter that contained deaf puppies. I had not discovered this until she was in whelp with her first litter – her breeder didn’t tell me. Poppy had been BAER (hearing) tested as normal.
I eventually decided that in spite of my need to replicate Poppy, this still stood as sound husbandry and also, that, as Addisons Disease is believed to be inherited, I couldn’t possibly risk the pain and suffering it brought to us being passed on to another dog and its owner. Now Fleet has been castrated and his brother Flash will be too. All other puppies born to Poppy have already been neutered, so this is the end of her line.
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