Josie drama in The Long and Winding Road

Those of you who are my friends on Facebook already know all about this, so please bear with me. Josie had a seizure on Wednesday night. It took me a few minutes to recognize it for what it was, since I’ve never witnessed one before. It was a couple hours after I’d gotten home from work. As usual, I’d been chatting to her. I mean, I do live alone, and she’s alone all day, so I like her to hear the sound of a human voice when I’m around. And it saves me from talking to myself (although I never had a problem with doing just that).

Anyway, I’d been chatting away cheerfully to her and she was being her usual playful, energetic self. I went out on the porch to enjoy the evening weather, and right after I sat down, she came running to the door and looked at me, and quickly darted her head to one side, then up towards the ceiling.... she was moving so quickly that I thought she had seen a fly or a bee, because she tries to chase them. She ran away from the door but a few minutes she was back and I realized that her behavior was “off”. I got up to see what was going on, and she ran across the kitchen floor, and started slipping and falling – her legs were giving out. She had a look of panic and confusion in her eyes and she almost looked like she was hallucinating; she couldn’t stop running around, as if she was trying to run away from whatever was happening to her. I wondered if she had been stung, or gotten a bee or wasp in her mouth. I picked her up and tried to look in her mouth, which she’s usually good about letting me do, but she had that mouth clamped shut. I put her down and she again started falling. Picked her up again, went to the couch to hold her and soothe her, but she was too agitated to let herself be soothed. She squirmed to get down, and when she jumped off the couch, she fell again. This is when I finally asked myself, “Is she having a seizure?”. I headed to the bedroom to get dressed to take her to the E.R. There was absolutely no hesitation or doubt on my part that that’s what I needed to do. While I was getting dressed, I talked to her in a soothing voice. She went up the stairs to my bed, and almost fell off the stairs.

Fortunately, the E.R. is only about 3 minutes away. She vomited on the way. She was shaking badly, and panting. When we got there, they took her to the back right away even though there were other, less urgent patients in the waiting room, waiting to be seen.

Long story short, she stayed there for 24 hours. As an aside, she had ruptured a blood vessel in her eye, which they were not alarmed about – apparently that can happen from the stress of the seizure. They ran some expensive blood tests and everything came back normal, so then they did a liver test that is more sensitive than the tests they’d already run. Liver problems are a common cause of seizures in dogs. That test showed slightly elevated bile levels but not enough for them to consider liver disease. We decided she would come home and I would keep an eye on her. It might have been a one-time event or it might be the beginning of something more. If she has another seizure we will do an ultrasound of her abdomen and if that doesn’t show any problems, we will move on to an MRI of her brain. I learned that seizures are fairly common for dogs and if they aren’t able to find a cause, they usually don’t treat the condition if the dog is having no more than one seizure a month. Otherwise they can go on anti-convulsant medication but once they start getting that, they have to stay on it for the rest of their lives.

I am so thankful that I have pet insurance. I decided it was worth the $21 a month so that hopefully, I would never have to make a decision about whether to treat Josie or not, based on how much it would cost. That doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen. I have a friend who has spent tens of thousands of dollars treating her dog for cancer, and that is not something I could do. But I am grateful that I didn’t have to hesitate at whatever tests they recommended for Josie.

All of that being said, it seems that there is a good possibility that the seizure was caused by the Trifexis that she takes monthly for flea and tick prevention. I’ve never thought twice about using Trifexis. My cats were on it for years, so was Bing. But my breeder contacted me after she saw all of this on Facebook and said that what Josie was doing sounded exactly like other dogs she has known who were reacting to Trifexis, and she sent me some links to stories about it online. Then other friends (who also have dogs from the same breeder) chimed in and said they would never give their dog Trifexis. It has a pesticide in it! I never thought of that. Then, my friend Rosalyn happened to be chatting with her vet yesterday and she told him about Josie and he said he has seen this happen from Trifexis many times, especially in smaller dogs. He said it usually happens as an allergic reaction after the first dose, OR, seizures after the dog has been on it for 12-18 months and there’s been a build up in the dog’s system. Josie has been on Trifexis for about 14 months and she just had this month’s dose, 24 hours before the seizure.

I’ve also heard from friends about some dogs who didn’t have a warning seizure – they just died. You can bet I will be talking to my vet about this at Josie’s annual check-up in a few weeks, and I will not be giving her any more Trifexis.

I still do need to monitor her though, to see if there are any more seizures. I actually have no way of knowing whether this was the first one (if the Trifexis was not the cause). So I am looking into getting a security camera to set up in my room, where I can confine her when I’m not home, so I would be able to watch her on my phone or my laptop when I’m not home. Obviously I can’t watch every minute but the video would be saved either to the Cloud or an SD card (depending on which camera and plan I would choose) and I could just fast forward through it each night to look for any abnormal behavior.

In other news..... well, there’s not a lot of other news. Josie’s drama has consumed me for the last few days.

I have an appointment with my doctor tomorrow to discuss all the aches and pains I’ve been having in my hips, legs and feet. My epidural injection is Tuesday and my acupuncture appointment is Thursday. So it will be a busy week of taking care of ME.

And that’s all I’ve got for now. I’m slowly getting caught up on reading your diaries. Have a wonderful weekend, everyone. Ciao!

Last updated June 10, 2016