canine pemphigus foliaceus

What the hell happened….

Woke up in the morning and Otis would not eat or drink. He went outside to potty and came straight back in to his bed. He would shiver and whine, breathing was strange and he just was miserable. He was also acting really strange. This in itself was not that off, Pemphigus can wax and wane.  Some days are good, others are bad.

Sometime in the afternoon he went outside and wandered like he was unaware of where he was, he tried to got potty about 15 times in a row so we tried to reach our derma vet and could not get in touch.

We contacted our regular vet and took him to the office, he took one look at him and could tell he was not well.  Got him started on IV fluids and took some blood to determine what was wrong, he decided to keep him in the office overnight.

My heart sank, we were right back to that horrible place again. That place of no hope. There were lots of tears and no sleep.

We went up the next morning to visit him, liver and pancreas levels were through the roof but he was hydrated again and feeling a little better.  Vet wanted to keep him all day and said we could pick him up that night if things were still going well.

Around 7pm on Sunday we picked him up, I noticed he seemed a little week in back legs but we thought it might have been from sleeping in a weird kennel. At home he had some trouble getting up the stairs and when he would sit/lay it seemed like he went down pretty hard.

The next morning when we woke he couldn’t stand on his own, I had to boost up his back legs. His legs were crossed in the back and he was weak walking. He couldn’t manage stairs at all and he nearly fell over when trying to sit/lay. More tears and a call to the vet. More bloodwork. Nothing in the bloodwork so took him home. More tears. Doc said steroid dosage could have been masking this all along and now that we were decreasing it was showing up. Maybe the Chloram was causing it?

A long debate with doctor and my husband on if it was time to end this, had it come to that point?

We had fought so hard and so long… I wasn’t ready.

September 21st he woke up and stood up on his own, weakly but on his own. By the end of the day he was getting stronger. The next day stronger and soon like he never had this problem. We’ve never figured out what it was, and probably never will but he was better and that’s all that mattered.