The last thing Pene deserved was to be sick again, but sometimes life isn't fair for dogs either. She went in for her annual check-up on September 26, and the routine blood work showed that her kidneys were having some serious issues. Her BUN and creatinine were really high. So last week she spent two days at Metro Paws getting IV fluids and was started on antibiotics and special food (low in protein). At no point did she ever seem sick. We didn't discover any particular reason (like toxin exposure or infection) for her kidneys to be not working correctly. It could be that they were damaged during her awful bout with distemper and might be permanently damaged :( What we're doing now, along with her special diet and antibiotics, is administering subcutaneous fluids twice a week at home. I stick her with a big needle under the skin of her back and Matt squeezes in a liter of saline. It makes her look like she has a camel hump, or like Murphy when he had his "sidecar"/"friend"/tumor.
She is SO good when we give her the fluids. We think she might honestly not even notice what we're doing, aside from that we're keeping her in one place. We do it at night when she's calm and sleepy, and that helps a lot.
What the plan is now is for her to get the fluid treatment twice a week for a month. Then we'll recheck the blood work. Then we'll do a month
without fluids, followed by blood work again. At that point we should know more about the nature of her kidney problems.
She is SO good when we give her the fluids. We think she might honestly not even notice what we're doing, aside from that we're keeping her in one place. We do it at night when she's calm and sleepy, and that helps a lot.