Monday, September 17, 2012
Warm Fuzzies Requested
In the wee hours of Wednesday morning something weird happened - Luna got out of bed and went to the yard to go potty. For most dogs this would not be considered much of event, the boys go out in the middle of the night to go potty pretty regularly, but Luna never, ever needs to go out before her morning walk.
On her morning walk, when she went potty, I noticed blood in her urine. I was alarmed, but didn't flip out about the blood because I figured the likely culprit was a urinary track infection. The earliest vet appointment I could get was Thursday.
On Thursday, Luna and I made the trip to the vet. In addition to taking a urine sample, I also talked to the vet about her cough that Luna had developed a few months ago but had been treated as acid reflux. The cough was not only not getting better but was now getting worse especially over the last few days.
When they examined Luna's urine, they did not see any indications of a urinary track infection. Other than the fact that there was blood in the urine everything looked right.
Luna was prescribed antibiotics even though it didn't seem like she had a urinary tract infection, something is clearly wrong. We didn't want to waste time waiting to see if the antibiotics would work within the week. We chose for proactive investigation. Our vet suggested that if we were going to do everything, we should bring her back the next day to get a sonogram done on her bladder and a chest X-Ray done, too, to see what might be causing her cough.
Friday, Luna had her tests done. The chest X-Rays revealed some "consolidation" on her right lung. It could be pneumonia, but it did not look like what a typical case of pneumonia looks like on an X-Ray. The sonogram on her bladder revealed that one of the walls on her bladder showed some thickening. There was also sediment in the bladder. The most concerning part about the bladder is that thickening on the walls is concentrated on one side. In a typical bladder infection case, the walls of the entire bladder would be thickened rather than centralized in one area.
After the X-Ray and and the sonogram, we still didn't have anything definitive to worry about (but that never stopped us from worrying before), but things certainly were not looking good for real.
The main concern is that Luna might have a tumor on her bladder. But, we don't know for sure. It could just be that Luna's bladder infection is just not as conventional as a usual bladder infection. A blood test was also done and it revealed that Luna's white blood cell count was on the high side of normal, BUT it was still in the normal range.
So for the time being Luna is on antibiotics. We are keeping our fingers crossed that the antibiotics will clear up everything. But in the meantime, bloodwork was sent out for a full panel and cultures on her urine were sent out to find out more about the cells in her urine.
After her first course of antibiotics, Luna will have another sonogram to see how the walls of her bladder look. If still thickened only in the one spot, a biopsy will be in order. A downside of a biopsy on the bladder is that if tumor is cancerous, the needle prick will release the cancerous cells into the rest of her body. So, while we don't want to delay it, we also do not want to rush the biopsy.
The best case scenario is that the antibiotics clear everything up. I am hoping against all hope that this is the case. (We should have lab results by Wednesday or Thursday. Until then….holding our breath.)
