So the beginning of December was a difficult time around here - Murphy became extremely ill.

I arrived at my parents' house after work to pick Murphy up, and he wasn't waiting for me at the door. Then I heard my father say; "Well are you going to get up to greet Meg?" and still no Murphy appeared. I went down to the family room where Murphy was sleeping all cuddled up next to my Dad. He struggled to get up to a sitting position. I knew something was wrong. When I got him standing up he just leaned against me. So I phoned the Vancouver Animal Emergency Clinic as our regular vet was closed at night, and then headed in to see them.

The emergency vet is about a 20 minute drive from my parents' house, and Murphy just lay against me the whole way down. They are the closest 24 hour vet to North Vancouver. It costs $165 to just see a vet, without any treatments, so thank God Murphy has health insurance! They checked him out, did blood and urine tests as well as an eye exam. He looked better at the clinic as he was excited - he was walking and looking around. I had to explain to the staff that normally he would be leaping up on furniture and eating things off the counter. The vet and the vet technician were very good, and very thorough. I was still dressed in my scrubs from the hospital, so that might have given me a little more authority on his health, but the vet asked me what I thought was wrong, as he didn't look that sick, and his only symptoms were a slight fever and some nausea upon having his stomach palpated. I told her that I KNEW that something was very wrong. She sent off the tests and told me to see my vet the following day when they'd have the test results. $400 for that visit.

So the next day we went in to our regular vet at the Blueridge Cove Animal Hospital. There we saw Dr. Moe Milstein, Murphy's vet since I brought him home. Dr. Moe is very knowledgeable, but reserved and very calm. He told me that Murphy's white blood cells were low. I instantly went to the worst possible scenario and thought leukemia. Dr. Moe was like; "Well, that's a possibility" but said that it was more likely to be an infection. I've seen this in patients at the hospital, where they have an overwhelming infection that uses up most of their white blood cells, leaving their stock depleted. Once they're recovering from the infection their body has a chance to build up more white blood cells.

Dr. Moe said that that was in fact the most likely scenario, or it could have been a lab error. So he ran another set of blood tests to see what his white blood cells were sitting at on that day. Murphy still had a fever, but he didn't want to put Murphy on any antibiotics yet as nothing had shown up saying that this truly was a bacterial infection. He asked me to phone in the next day for the results. $100 for that visit, plus I took a sick day, so I used up 11.5 sick hours. Thank God I have a dog owning boss, as that wasn't even questioned. At this point Murphy was starting to slow down his speed at eating, and only stood up when I got him up to pee.

The next day Dr. Moe's colleague Dr. Kim Kennedy called us to say that Murphy's blood cells were up, but only slightly, and that she wanted to put him on both types of antibiotics because she also believed that "massive bacterial infection" was the most likely diagnosis. Those words made my heart drop...as well as the fact that she didn't laugh me off when I mentioned to her that I'd leapt right to leukemia with Dr. Moe the day before. Usually the vets laugh at how overly concerned I am with Murphy, but not this time. Dr. Kennedy said that this could be bacterial, viral, or "bone marrow suppression" ie. leukemia, and that if Murphy didn't respond to the antibiotics she'd want to do a bone marrow biopsy.

The drugs cost about $100. She asked how Murphy was doing, and when I told her that by this point I was having to hand feed him, and put his dish under him to force him to drink, she told me that she and Dr. Moe had been talking, and they thought I should bring him in for xrays to rule out any masses in his chest or abdomen. The idea that the two of them were talking about him, and thinking about what else they should be doing scared me. Above we have a proof of just how sick he was - that's sushi in the white bag, and Murphy isn't even getting up into a sitting position to sniff it, let alone doing his normal manic routine!

I went to work that night as Murphy was being watched by my parents. He'd started intermittently panting for no apparent reason, other than the fever. I was terrified that he'd die while I was at work. I phone home every hour, and Murphy did just fine.

So the next day we went in for xrays. $200. Dr. Kennedy immediately told me that there was nothing obvious on xray, which gave me great relief. But she also took his temperature and at this point it was up over 40 degrees. She asked me to bring him in to be admitted if Murphy started to refuse to drink or eat, and she'd put him on IV fluids.

Luckily after less than 48 hours on the antibiotics Murphy started turning around. He perked back up, was walking around, and within a few days his white blood cells were back to normal! $100 for that round of tests. All of Murphy's normal behaviours started coming back. It was so exciting I started photographing him:

All those pictures give you a better idea of how sick he was, as he wasn't doing any of those things while he was under the weather. So total the cost was about $930, or which I got $530 back from his insurance, as he has a $200 deductible, and then it pays 80%. Combine this with all my Christmas shopping and it has been a tight few months around here! But having Murphy healthy again was such a gift in itself.

Other December occurrences included a different health crisis - Murphy got into the chocolate!

It was my fault, I'd left it down where he could get it while I was out of the room. He managed to eat somewhere between 50 and 100g of milk chocolate, which shouldn't be anywhere near enough to kill him. But I induced vomiting anyway, just to be safe. Above we have him in the bathtub, the cleanest place to induce vomiting that I've come up with. Below we have his first aid kit with all the stuff I need:

There you can't see it, but he will pull them out of the laundry basket and hand then to me one pair at a time, for me to put them in the drawer.

He ran around, rolled around, and came inside covered in snowballs. I then took some shots of our yard:

 

So that was the beginning of December around here. Next up - Christmas!

Email me!

Meghan

Here's the link to the next update: Christmas 2006
Here's the link to the previous update: November 2006

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