Rosie is our success story for this month!

Three weeks ago, Rosie and I both got sick with a cough and cold. We both seemed to be recovering and then I noticed Rosie had some blood in her urine. This has happened before, as I must squeeze her bladder four times a day as she is unable to urinate. I was going to send a sample to the lab to make sure she did not have a bladder infection and then she vomited some blood. Now I was really alarmed and took her over to the clinic to run some tests. I noticed she had some bruising on her left shoulder and the right side of her neck. I was pretty sure I knew what was going on and needed to run one test to see if my suspicion was right.

The Complete Blood Count showed she had very few platelets. I have seen these cases many times on Emergency. The patient, for many times unknown reasons, attacks their own platelets, and they start to bleed from many places, and they may die. The treatment is primarily steroids or other immunosuppressive drug to get the body to stop attacking the platelets. The trick after that is to know when to stop the treatment and to wean them off the steroids or risk affecting the adrenal glands.

The other complicating factor is that Rosie is a heart patient and is not supposed to receive steroids as it can cause faster heart failure. I had to pick a reasonable dose to stop the destruction of the platelets, but now send her into heart failure. By the next morning, the blood in the urine was not evident. It took a few more days for the bruising on her skin to start to resolve, and the bloody vomit stopped right away. She also received a gastrointestinal protectant, as steroids can cause GI ulcers in dogs, and an anti-vomiting drug.

She was completely weaned off the steroids a few days ago and we ran the complete blood count again. Her platelets are back to normal! Rosie must have nine lives because she has survived so much, and she bounces back and runs around barking like nothing happened. She is undaunted, and I love her!!!