A Turn for the Worse

Cody's wheel chair was a godsend, but he was having trouble urinating in the cart. I would put him in it and he would posture to pee, but only little squirts of urine would come out. I figured that the pressure from the leg harness was occluding his urethra because when I took him out of the cart he urinated fairly well. So I set to work adjusting the cart; up, down, legs bigger, legs smaller... you name it that darn cart got taken apart and put back together multiple times per walk. No amount of trouble shooting seemed to make a difference. And, an email to the wheel chair company about the problem was, well...rather disappointing to say the least. "I'm sorry to hear that the dog is having a trouble using the bathroom." Gee thanks. Needless to say, I'm not impressed with the customer service at Walkin' Wheels.

He got his cart on Friday and could mostly walk on his own, he was just unable to get up by himself. By Sunday he was unable to walk; his back legs seemed to be totally paralyzed, and by Sunday night he was in a panic - dragging himself around the house, panting and very agitated. The trouble shooting began with taking him outside to pee - no luck, nothing, not a drop. Oh geesh. This meant I would have to pass a urinary catheter and empty his bladder that way. Sometimes you can manually express your pet's bladder with gentle pressure on the abdomen, but that wasn't gonna happen with my 80 lb dog with a super tense belly. No way. So it was off to the emergency room for a urinary catheterization. Yep, the bladder was huge when we looked at it with the ultrasound. My poor pup had probably not been fully emptying his bladder for about 2-3 days.

Now that Cody was definitely neurologic it was time to see the neurologist. I had set up an appointment for Tuesday, but because he couldn't urinate it was now an emergency. In this situation, if he didn't have cancer I would have assumed that he had herniated a disc. The symptoms and progression of symptoms were pretty classic for a herniated disc - progressive weakness progressing to paralysis. If this ever happens to your dog, get them to the emergency ASAP. The reason not to wait is that performing surgery in a timely manner can mean the difference between your dog walking again or being paralyzed for life.

Since my dog had cancer there was some question as to whether the problem was a herniated disc or perhaps spread of his osteosarcoma into his spine or spinal cord. The neurologist confirmed my suspicions. My options at this point were to consider some more imaging to see if we could find out exactly what was causing the spinal cord damage. We took radiographs, but they did not confirm anything. At least if there had been a bone tumor in the spine we might have seen it. Or if a disc had ruptured, the space between the vertebra where the disc is suppose to be might have been smaller (you can't see the disc itself on x-rays, because it is not dense enough). No answers yet. An MRI would have been the next step. I opted not to do an MRI. The reason was that it wasn't going to change the treatment plan. At this point with a herniated disc a pet owner needs to decide if they will proceed with an MRI with the plan being to go to surgery immediately after the MRI. Even if it wasn't the osteosarcoma effecting his spinal cord and is was just a herniated disc, the likelihood that Cody would walk again was dubious considering his concurrent cancer. He just didn't have that much time left. We went home. He with an indwelling urinary catheter, me with a heavy heart.

That night my poor dog suddenly became very painful after eating his dinner. Again, trouble shooting the situation, I figured his pain medications had worn off. He ate dinner, then refused his pill pockets (that's what I hide his pills in, and he loves them!). Situation critical! Finally I got all his medications into him with cheese! Just a quick comment here about owners and their quirks.... they love to tell vets the nitty-gritty details of what type of food they use to get medications into their dogs. We just smile and nod... So you can just smile and nod here...

It was a very traumatic night for both of us. My normally zen happy dog was suddenly sitting up with his front legs stiff, eyes wide, ears back and shaking. It just ripped my heart open to watch. After the medications started to kick in and after I did an acupuncture treatment he was able to calm down and sleep a little, but he still wasn't comfortable. A call to the ER yielded a recommendation to pull the urinary catheter in case it was making him uncomfortable. That didn't really help much. It took a trip to the ER, more medications and a shot of oxymorphone (a type of morphine) to get both of us to sleep (he got the shot, I was just emotionally and physically exhausted).

Seeing my dog in such pain made me realize that it was time to give up the battle. I did not want him to suffer in that kind of pain for a moment longer. I also did not want to wait for another crisis situation, where he would be in a panic and I would be distraught, to euthanize him. I decided that we would have a great last day doing all the things he loved doing and that he would go out as happy as possible.