I've found myself at midnight squatting beside her in tears (after a time in which a lot of work pressure, lack of sleep, and worries about health issues for my mum have stretched me to my limits) as milky porridge flies around the cloakroom in which she sleeps, splattering The Man's coats, the floor, my face, her coat, her new bed struggling with a tiny syringe to get a teaspoonful of water down her while she reacts traumatically, burying her head and shaking. I can't pretend it's not been a struggle. Drinking's still an issue, but I suspect this is partly psychosomatic: when she found a day or two in that she couldn't lap up water (she prefers puddles, flowerpots, stream water even though we're on a borehole) she avoided going near it at all, so won't try. We're on day 13, and for the first time today she managed a handful of small biscuits alone. Often it can start to clear between 2-4 weeks after its onset. In many cases it follows trauma to the head (maybe her eye counts) sometimes it's a symptom of an underlying disorder sometimes it's idiopathic. I don't know for sure, of course, but my sense is that the inflammation in the eyelid travelled back up a nerve. (It's rare.)īasically that's an inflammation or disturbance in one of the main nerves that serve the face this one affects both jaw and eyes and therefore the muscles that control both. Both vets investigated further and agreed that was the most likely cause. said 'I wouldn't normally suggest my clients do this, but you might try googling the symptoms.' So I did: 'trigeminal neuritis' came up.
Two vets looked at her and both were baffled – the symptoms didn't add up to anything immediately recognisable. (I see she's acquired a small crescent of blueish pigment in her brown irises, at the bottom, too.) At this point she stopped being able to drink, and mostly also to eat – her tongue worked but since she couldn't close her mouth she couldn't get food back into her throat, or chew it, against gravity.
Her eyes became extraordinarily red and one nearly closed.
At first it was only a centimetre or two, then four or five cms, and that's how it's been. Next symptoms were her pupils became hugely dilated, and then her mouth started to hang open. Six months on, no nearer its clearing up, we gave her another course of antibiotics and then added in topical steroid cream – I wasn't happy, but was feeling desperate (had tried everything natural I could think of by then).Ī few days later (and incidentally unlikely to be the allopathic meds, though a bit of me would of course like to blame a reaction on the pharmaceuticals), something changed in her face – she looked old, suddenly, kind of caved-in, and her eyes weren't right. I succumbed after a few months to a vet visit and antibiotics – mostly because it was troubling her, and because we needed to know it was nothing contagious – eg ringworm – as she was going to be staying with my daughter with a friend with dogs. As I use almost exclusively natural remedies (my daughter was brought up without ever having antibiotics or any allopathic medication) and know a lot about medical herbalism, that was the obvious route for treatment. My beautiful hound has had a sore and inflamed eyelid for months. For those of you who know my blog, just to say that yes that title is literal, and if you don't fall into that very tiny percentage of people who might be interested in neurological disorders in canines, come back later when normal service will be resumed! This post is to add to the info available on the net for others who find themselves at some stage in my position the last week or two.
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