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Old October 6th, 2010, 04:25 PM
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Rgeurts Rgeurts is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tillieplay View Post
HI! I was wondering if your dog had any other symptoms besides seizures for the meningitis?

I took Pixie to the vet Monday to get her vaccination. She had another seizure Monday night. She has no other health issues and is completely healthy otherwise. I called the vet yesterday morning and he has given her a prescription for Phenobarbital. This was his explanation: All of her blood work came back normal. The only way to diagnose unforeseen disease is further, possible painful, testing. He said the Pheno will help curb how often she has seizures whether it is epilepsy or not. Since her seizures are the only problem she's having right now she'll be fine. If other symptoms show up later on he'll re-diagnose her.
I'm very sorry to hear that tillieplay. He is doing exactly what the first few vets did to us. It's what I was talking about before. Instead of trying to figure out what's wrong, they just push them onto pheno. Our puppy had no clinical symptoms of meningitis whatsoever. Clinically, he was a perfectly happy puppy (except he had diahhrea alot ), which is what confused our vet. he didn't have a raised white cell count, he didn't have a fever or painful joints etc. The painful tests your vet is talking about are most likely blood tests and a CSF tap. Our puppy came through all of them with no problems at all.

One thing our vet did tell us is that alot of vets will look at the bloodwork, especially where the liver is concerned (the liver is a huge culprit for seizures in a puppy). She said the enzymes come back as not showing elevated in the blood so they assume all is well, but if your pup has a liver shunt and the liver is not working properly, the enzymes wouldn't be showing as elevated in the blood because the liver "isn't" working properly. The first test I would request is an Bile Acid test. It isn't painful. You basically have to fast the pup for 12 hours, they draw blood, then feed and draw blood again. if that comes back normal then the CFS tap is a good test. It's the only test that came back abnormal. If your pup has been exposed to parasites like neospora, toxo or crypto, there will be indicators in the CSF. The same with meningitis.

Good luck and I hope everything works out. Please let me know how your baby is doing
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