Saturday, July 12, 2008 . 7/12/2008
Well, it finally happened. We had to put our 11-year-old dachshund, Sugar, to sleep yesterday afternoon due to kidney and liver failure. What's weird is that it all started with a swollen eye. Let me explain...
A little over a week ago I noticed that Sugar's right eye was a little red and swollen, but it wasn't too bad. I showed my parents and they said that if it didn't go away or if it got worse by the next day they'd take her to the vet. Fast forward to a day or two and the whole right side of her face got swollen, she was shaking all over and she looked really tired and just plain horrible in general. And that eye... let's just say that if she happened to be a pug, it probably would have popped out.
She lost tons of weight (since she had Cushing's Disease, her stomach bloated up but you could easily feel her ribs and spine by this point). Since it was Sunday, no regular vet was open so we called an e-vet. They suggested giving her a Benadryl to calm down the swelling, so we did, and it helped a bit. We took her to the vet the next day of course, and they thought that it could have been an infected tooth that made her face poof up. Either that or it could be cancer, they said, but they wanted to rule out the infected tooth first, since they didn't think that cancer was too likely. So they gave her some antibiotics and told us to take her back to get another injection the next day. She was scheduled to be put under the following weekend to see about said possible infected tooth since she was in too much pain as it was to risk doing so while she was awake.
Fast forward to Friday and she's bleeding from her mouth, but the swelling was down quite a bit. My dad guessed that it was the infection draining out, but her breathing was shallow and it looked like she could die at any minute, so my parents took her back to the vet (I couldn't be there at the time). They ended up having to put her to sleep because it was discovered, as I mentioned earlier, that her liver and kidneys were failing.
So now I'm wondering how a swollen face could connect to liver and kidney failure. Ever since it swelled up, she stopped eating her food (she was all for cat food and beef though, as always), and she drank water but she didn't pee. Could it have been something she got into? Poisoning? Or maybe it really was cancer... I know it's pointless to speculate if all of this could have been prevented since it's obviously too late, but I can't help but wonder.
Anyway, my next post will be dedicated to the happier memories.
