The Wandering Drive

Have you ever been driving and your mind wanders off to another place and then all of a sudden you come back to reality and you look around frantically, “Wait. Where am I? Did I miss my turn? How long have I been driving? Was I driving?”

This happens occasionally to me. I drift off into my own little world and start deep thinking about things. I did this on the way to the vet with Leroy the other day.

My mind started drifting off to how many times I’ve driven to the vet with the Newfoundland’s of my life.  Storm, Thunder, Sherman and Leroy. There’s been many trips, many tears and many smiles along the way. The roads traveled were different but all were amazing journeys.

After several minutes of dazing out, with tears in my eyes, I came back to reality and looked around to make sure I wasn’t lost.

Luckily for me and every other driver out on the road,  I was still on the right road headed in the right direction.

Here’s the low down on Leroy’s recheck. (For those that missed last month’s post you can check it out HERE)

He weighed in at 144 pounds which is down 6 pounds from last month. Mildly concerning at first but I couldn’t become too concerned until I knew where his levels  were so I waited for the vet to comment.

The basic recheck went well. No issues found.

A full blood panel was run and the results were better than last.

Leroy’s albumin came back at 2.1.

This is up from 1.1 last month and he’s out of the dangerously low zone. (I wrote 1.4 in my last post but apparently I didn’t hear correctly)

Low normal is 2.6 so he still needs to come a little more but we are very happy with the improvement.

His cholesterol was improved also. I didn’t know it was off last time but the vet said it was pretty low at the last check and now it’s right at normal.  Makes sense because he wasn’t absorbing any nutrients I guess.  It’s my fault for not asking for a copy of the results which I normally always do.

As far as the weight loss goes the vet doesn’t think that it’s anything to be too concerned about. There’s a good chance that it’s fluid weight that he lost.

We are reducing the Prednisone to 1/4 tablet once a day and rechecking in 6 weeks.

I also discussed how fast this came on this time and the vet said that in some dogs it does. We also talked about the edema I felt in the ears last month prior to our visit and the vet said that dogs can have different symptoms and this could be one of Leroy’s symptoms, since he had the same thing last time. It’s a good thing to check and pick up on because next time we can just immediately start the steroids instead of delaying treatment until we can get into the vet.

So it was good news. I was hoping that his levels would come back normal but I knew in the back of my head that it probably wouldn’t. It drops so fast and it’s a long and steady road to bring it back up.

Thanks so much for all the good luck wishes. I feel that more confident that I have a better grip on this after this go around. I’m able to spot the symptoms and act accordingly if  it happens again.

We’ll update again after his next recheck!

p.s. We’ll be sending out our first newsletter of 2017 this weekend so don’t forget to sign up! -> My Brown Newfies Newletter.

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