Wednesday, March 1, 2006
The Daily Drops
Luna, our newest pug who recently came to our family has some medical issues. One of her issues is that she has chronic dry eye and she must be given several eye drops each day.
In the morning she receives her first dose. She gets a drop of Cyclosporin in each eye. About 5 minutes later, she must get a drop of NeoPolyDex in her right eye and a drop in her left eye every other day. The third medicated drop is Tacrolimus. She gets this dose about 5 minutes after the NeoPolyDex. That is the morning routine.
Midday is a little easier with only the one dose of Tacrolimus in the right eye. In the evenings, the routine is the same as the mornings.
The one medicine, Tacrolimus, is designed to help stimulate her own natural tear production and it does seem to be working. She will go in for a follow-up visit to the opthamologist in about a month to see if it just our imagination or if it is actually helping. In any case, she will have to be on at least one of these drops, if not all 3, for the rest of her life most likely.
The good thing is that Luna really seems to know that the drops help her to feel better because she generally does a really good job about allowing us to put the drops in her eyes. Her vision isn’t terrific, though. The vet compares her eyesight to that of a frosted car window. She can see light but not a lot of shadows or shapes (out of her right eye).
Her left eye, while also suffering from dry eye, is not quite as bad. Her sight is pretty good in that eye. It can be odd, though, because she can see to jump up on things (and boy, does she ever jump on things—the coffee table, the end table and any other flat surface that she can manage to spring herself on top of.) However, she cannot see to get down off of these obstacles. She’ll get up there but then she’s stuck. Fortunately, we are always there to help the little acrobat decend her monumental climbs.
Hopefully, in time, the meds will be able to help restore at least a small part of her lost vision and then one day she’ll be able to get herself out of trouble.
