That is great. My 12.75 year old golden was diagnosed two days ago with a raging, raging kidney infection. She had been in 2 1/2 weeks earlier becaue she had 2 seizures within 3 weeks. My vet was at a seminar up in Boston, but had a fill in vet. She ran a lot of blood work and found Sophie was anemic. Gave her a B12 injection and put her on an antibiotic in case she had had had tick borne disease BEFORE we adopted her shortly after her 11th birthday. She also put her on phenobarbital.
I took her off the pheno after a week of watching spend most of her time down on the grown. Bad his and knees and she would o down spread eagle, etc and I was scared she was going to dislocate or break something. She was to have the follow up with my vet Tuesday--we are in a small town of 400, one vet who is so good he has clients come 25 miles out of Corpus which is full of vets, for him to treat their dogs and cats. He stays up to date on everything.
Well, he said no need to run all that blood work again, but did do a RBC and she was even more anemic, Losing blood somewhere. Got urine sample and found the raging infections, but no blood showed in the urine. They took a stool sample and sent it off to have it checked for blood in her GI tract. He said we have to treat everything aggressively.
First of all, a full 30 days of the antibiotic Augmentin for the kidney infection. And put her on Royal Canin Renal Support kibble and canned. For her arthritis, very low dose pain pil daily (actually 1/4 of a Melosican) once daily. I am to continue the 2000 mf of fish oil with Omega-3. She has been on Cosequin and it did help, but we started her on Adequan injections. She got one then and will get 2 a week for 4 weeks, then 1 a week, then 1 every two weeks and if all goes well, just 1 a month. She also has dry eye, so is on special drops once a day for that and then can use OTC artificial tears again in the day if needed.
We got a call this morning--no blood in her stool. He believes and hopes that the anemia is caused by her kidney infection which she has apparently had for a good while. We will know more after the infection clears up. Neither he nor that visiting vet 3 weeks ago could find any masses, but there could always be a small bleeding one on spleen or liver. If the anemia remains the same or gets worse, ultrasound will be done next.
We are 71 and 72 years old and living on social security. we joke we may be grazing in our yard before long. That food is almost $3 a can, the bag about $58 for 17 1/2 pounds. And it is nothing but "junk"--Brewers rice, chicken fat, corn, corn gluten, etc. We have been paying less than that, a lot less, for a 30 pound bag of really good grain free food. BUT I know this renal support works, so no choice. I may start cooking the special food for her. Has to keep protein so low (me too, I am in lower end stage 3 failure myself). The Adequan is "eating our lunch" right now, but once the injections are every 2 weeks, etc, it will not be bad. But our little girl is worth it. We love her so much.