canine pemphigus foliaceus

Everything going great until December 6th.

Son and I are making dinner, I look down at Otis and it literally looks like his eye had sunk in. He looks as if he’d had a stroke. I freaked and yelled for my son to come look and immediately called our vet. Now to backtrack they had told me early on during one of the ER vet visits that he had a corneal ulcer but this all took a back seat. At one point I was concerned with the eye and told my husband I was sure it was something else but we had so much on our hands with the Pemphigus we just let it go.

I took him up to the vet right away and they did some tests and said it was most likely an ulcer, gave me drops and said that all the meds he was on could hinder the healing.

This is what he looked like….

We started the drops and that night nobody in the house slept. Otis tried for hours to get comfortable and never could. He spent the night going from bed to couch to floor, laying down for a few minutes and then spinning in circles to get comfortable. This went on all night. I knew he was miserable. We contacted the vet and he referred us to dog Ophthalmologist who, if needed, could do surgery that day.

Yet another doctor, and waiting.

Eye doc confirmed my earlier fears when looking at the eye, he had a melanoma in the eye and we would have to remove the eye. Not only that but this type of cancer, if it spreads, will go to the lungs/stomach.  The eye was so full of pressure that it was basically like the worst human migraine, thus the inability to sleep or get comfortable.

We had to make a choice about surgery but most importantly to get him out of pain and comfortable.

Tests would need to be done to see if he was healthy enough to withstand surgery and there was the concern of healing, with all the meds he was on. They also needed to know if the melanoma had spread. We decided at that moment if it was anywhere else, we would stop fighting and we wouldn’t put him through anything else. My heart broke again that day and there were more tears.

Xrays and scans showed he was all clear so we upped his pain meds and gave drops to relieve the pressure, and scheduled the surgery.

At home he curled up and slept, never though another creatures comfort would make me feel so relieved.