Where in NJ? Do you have a wonderful vet? If you're in central
NJ, I can recommend one.....
=^..^= Terri, Salome', Siggie the Tomato Vampire, Guinevere, Sammi, Travis,
and 5 furangels: RuthieGirl, Samantha, Arielle, Gareth and Alec =^..^=
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, September 11, 2005 11:34
AM
Subject: Need advice
Hi all. As you know, I moved to NJ and so now am dealing with all
new vets. Lucy had a bladder stone (struvite) in the spring and was on
clavamox and S/D until her symptoms went away and the x-ray showed no more
stone. She got symptoms again a few weeks ago. I switched her to S/D again and
put her on Clavamox and, when I ran out, Amoxi. I then got a house call
vet with an association with a local vet office, who did x-rays and saw
nothing. I i nsisted it was probably a bladder stone and she insisted it
wasn't, and from the urinalysis she said there is a bad UTI and the amoxi is
not doing anything and we need to to a sterile sample via needle and a
bacteria-specific screen. I then got an ultrasound of Lucy and, low and
behold, there is a cluster of small stones. So she is back on the S/D with a
follow-up ultrasound scheduled for a month from now to see if the are
dissolving or need to be surgically removed. In the meantime, the vet
said to take her off antibiotics for a week in order to be able to do a
bacteria-specific screen. So I took her off two days ago, and now she is
peeing frequently again and there is more and brighter blood in her
urine.
The vet had said that if I do not want to wait a week to do the screen,
that I can just put her on Baytril and see if it works. The downside is that
if it does not it narrows the range of other antibiotics that can be tried,
because I guess it can make her resistant to some of them. And according
to the vet this means risk of superinfection. But I also do not want her
to be really uncomfortable and let an infection rage out of control for a
whole week. So I am inclined to just put her on the baytril and if that
does not work put her back on Clavamox which was at least doing something even
if not getting rid of the infection, and see if the S/D helps in the meantime.
But I really am not sure about this because risk of superinfection sounds
scary. I left a message for the vet today asking if we can do the urine sample
tomorrow with her being off antibiotics for only 3 days and just see if it
says something helpful. I have not heard back yet. I want to know your
opinions.Lucy is positive.
On a similar note, this same vet says I need to bring Patches to a
dentist to get her two broken canines removed. They have been broken
since she came to me about 3 years ago. She is positive and probably about 5
years old. I have read, and was told by the vet, that broken canines are like
wicks for bacteria, which can injure the kidneys, heart, and liver and also
become abcessed, and thus they need to be removed. But I also know that when
Ginger, who is positive, got 10 teeth removed, she got really sick with a bad
URI which took weeks to heal and she was not eating or anything, had to be
syringe-fed, etc. I am very glad I got Ginger's teeth out, of course, because
the pain from them had made her stop eating. But Patches, as of now, does not
seem to be affected by the broken teeth. It is not always possible to tell, of
course, until the pain overwhelms them so that they stop eating. And she does
overgroom, which could be a symptom of pain I guess. I am planning on taking
her to the dentist, I think, for an eval, but I am sure the dentist will
probably say the teeth need to come out. The issue with me is that yes, I
would get them out if Patches were negative, but she is a 5 year old positive
who has done pretty well thus far and I feel like I am really taking a gamble
with her virus if I put her through oral surgery. What do you
think?
Thanks,
Michelle
