The Gift

I came home from work the other night to find two more ornaments from the Christmas tree chewed to pieces in the middle of the living room rug.

"What is this?" I asked Cassie in a stern voice, pointing at the plastic shards of a blue icicle. Yes, I know that if you don't correct a dog immediately after they do something like this, they quickly lose the memory, since they have no concept of time, and they have no idea why you're yelling at them. I just wanted to see how she'd respond.

She responded by wagging her tail so hard it seemed like it would fly off her rear end. She gave me her biggest shark smile and tried to leap into my arms to lick my face.

While it irritates (and okay, sometimes really enrages) me to come home and find destruction of one sort or another strewn about my house, I get over it pretty quickly. I understand Cassie's limits (she hates being left alone, she gets bored easily, she acts out when she hasn't had enough exercise), and I also understand that Kurt and I are the leaders of this pack and it's up to us to take precautions, such as placing the "good" ornaments higher up on the tree where she can't reach them or making sure the Christmas cookies are covered in five layers of tinfoil and set up on a top shelf. As dogs go, Cassie's a really good one.

And last year at this time we thought we were going to lose her.

The problem arose in August 2008, when we brought Cassie in to have some fatty tumors removed. One of the tumors was about the size of a tennis ball right in her armpit, and we feared that if it grew any larger it would disturb the nerves in her leg. The vet drew blood and gave her a checkup before giving us the green light for surgery. It wasn't until after the surgery that I learned Cassie's "liver levels" were high. This worried me, but surgery was so hard on Cassie that I was distracted with her post-op care. We learned that she didn't react to medications well at all and we even had to resort to the dreaded "cone" because she wouldn't leave the incision in her armpit alone.

Talk about stress! So we were ready for a fun, relaxing holiday season when November rolled around. We got through Thanksgiving, set up all our Christmas stuff, and I made plans to travel north for a creative writing residency in the new year. Then, we noticed Cassie was drinking a lot of water. Like, a gallon of water every hour. She needed to go out and pee non-stop. This was weird enough, but then...she stopped eating. Cassie NEVER stops eating. She would eat all day long every day if she had the opportunity. Along with the constant water-drinking and non-eating, she would drag herself to the couch and lie there in a lethargic stupor.

At first, when we got her back to the vet, he suspected a urinary tract infection because of all Cassie's water inhalation and her constant peeing. We were sent home with an antibiotic and some acidophilus supplements. They also drew more blood, and a few days later we got a disturbing call: Cassie's liver chemistry was even higher than it was in August.

"Did she eat anything toxic that you know of? Drink anything poisonous?" the vet questioned, and when we answered no to everything, it was clear that he was stumped.

The next course of action the vet decided on was to prescribe Cassie some Metronidazole. A description of this drug is as follows: "Metronidazole is an antibiotic which is commonly used to treat protozoal infections and anaerobic bacterial infections. It also has anti-inflammatory effects in the bowel. Metronidazole is bactericidal; it kills bacterial microorganisms by disrupting their DNA. It is rapidly absorbed from the GI tract, metabolized by the liver and excreted in the urine and the feces..." (Forney).

Okay, I thought. It's not a UTI after all; the vet thinks she ate something that's causing a bacterial infection. We can handle this. The drugs will wipe out whatever is making her sick and she'll get better. I feel it prudent to tell you that I have issues with the use of Metronidazole in animals. In a future entry I will discuss how I'm sure this drug caused our cat Piper's epilepsy. Suffice it to say, "Metronidazole is not FDA-approved for use in veterinary medicine, although this drug is commonly used in dogs" (Vetinfo). In spite of my misgivings, we went ahead and started giving Cassie the pills; after all, the vets are the ones with the degrees, right?

Cassie got worse. She started whining whenever we looked at her. "Try to get her to eat something, anything," the vet advised. We cooked her chicken. We tried steak. She didn't want any of it. Desperate, I handed her a slice of bread. She took it in her mouth and wandered off into the living room, where I later found the discarded bread on a couch cushion.

Her next blood panel showed sky-high liver chemistry. Like in the danger-zone. Cassie was essentially going into liver failure.

"I want to get an ultrasound of her liver, make sure there's nothing there," the vet told us.

"There" was the vet's polite term for "cancer." In a daze I went about my days. I attended my work Christmas luncheon like a zombie, talked endlessly about the problem to anyone who would listen, couldn't relax when I was home. You must understand that Cassie is my first dog, an experience that has been full of love and frustration and life lessons and deep, deep bonding. Cassie is my baby, whether she is human or canine. The possibility of losing her felt like my heart was being ripped from my chest. It hurt. It hurt to see her suffer. It hurt to be so helpless. I remember sitting in the living room. Cassie dragged herself to the love seat, where Kurt was, and climbed into his lap. It was obvious she wanted comfort. He held her like that as she fell asleep, and the strain on his arms wasn't that much since she was rapidly losing weight.

A few anxious days later Cassie received her ultrasound, which showed no cancer. Another blood panel finally revealed that she tested positive for leptospirosis, a bacteria that is spread to humans and canines through infected animal tissue, urine, or infected water. Many of the symptoms include excessive drinking, loss of appetite, depression, and liver failure. We live near the Illinois Prairie Path, and along an open section called Wild Meadows Trace, we allow Cassie to run and explore off the leash. It is very likely that she decided to drink from a stagnant puddle and picked up the leptospirosis from there.

We stopped the Metronidazole and started Cassie on an aggressive round of the antibiotic doxycycline, along with intravenous fluid. By Christmas Day she was eating, sleeping, perking up, and even enjoying her new bone from Santa. We were many thousand dollars and sleepless nights later, but my baby had recovered. When some of the terror and anxiety lifted, I began to wonder. Did Cassie have leptospirosis all along, and we made it 100 times worse by feeding her Metronidazole? After doing some research I discovered this: "Due to its tendency to disrupt the liver process and cause liver failure, [Metronidazole] should be avoided or used with extreme caution in animals with preexisting liver or kidney damage" (Vetinfo). When I brought up my theory to the vet, I was shot down and told they hand out this drug "like candy." My response: that doesn't mean it's safe.

Here's what I know for sure: I will never, ever agree to give this medication to one of my pets ever again, and if by some weird act of God I'm required to take it, a lot of heavy thinking is going into my decision.

When all of this was going on last Christmas, all I wanted was for my dog to be healthy again, to have just a few more years with her. I got that wish, and I have to say the experience has changed my outlook a lot. I haven't even thought much about presents this year. What I really want is to be safe at home, baking cookies and looking out the window with Kurt and Cassie, watching the snow come down. To be in the company of my healthy, happy loved ones is all I want today, and tomorrow, and forever.

This is the best gift. And I will keep on remembering that, even when I come home to sixteen more chewed-up ornaments on the floor....


Works Cited:

~Barbara Forney, VMD. "Metronidazole For Veterinary Use." http://www.wedgewoodpharmacy.com/monographs/metronidazole.asp

~Canine Leptospirosis. http://marvistavet.com/html/body_canineleptospirosis.html

~Vetinfo. "Controlling Parasites With Metronidazole for Dogs." http://www.vetinfo.com/controlling-parasites-metronidazole.html