Thursday, April 2, 2009

jules update

our neighbors kindly took jules to the vet this morning for her echo cardiogram. i picked her up about 20 minutes ago. dr. carter said that both the ekg and the echo showed signs of heart disease, however, it is mild at this point in time. speaking from her "gut" she thinks the heart disease was not the cause of the episode yesterday.

dr. carter asked michael if there was any chance jules could have been biten by a bug or something yesterday. she felt like jules could have been having an allergic reaction. when i got to the vet, i verified that, in fact, there had been a bee buzzing around us quite a bit just before jules started acting funny. we never actually saw jules react to the bee or yelp so we didn't even put the two together. dr. said that if the bee sting is what caused this episode, jules' reaction would have happened too quickly for us to even see swelling on her face. one good thing, is that i know exactly what that would have looked like. when we also had dixie, jules' mom, she was stung or bitten and her face was puffy and raw and painful looking.

so, the plan now is that we keep benadryl on hand all the time. if anything like that happens again, we are to give her the benadryl and head to the vet. if it is an allergic reaction, the benadryl can help keep things at bay until we get there. if is related to her heart disease, the benadryl will not affect her at all.

now, the doc wants to put jules on a heart monitor for a week to help determine arrhythmias. once that is better understood, we will know what heart medication jules needs. we won't decide if we're going to do that until we see how much it would cost us.

needless to say, i feel a lot better with the information that the doctor thinks jules was not dying from heart disease yesterday. i know we will still watch her and do the best we can to help prevent any issues, but it helps to know that her heart disease is, for now, slightly mild.

thank you, Jesus, for watching over our little butt shaker. she is so important to us.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh thank goodness! I'm so glad

marme said...

Me too!

Adam said...

Crazy boxers! They are always getting into something. Hope everything continues to go well with her and that you have her for years and years to come. :)

kablot spot said...

My dog was allergic to ants. Her little face would get so puffy and she would make a weird noise because her sinuses were constricted. I would give her benedryl. The thing about dogs and benedryl is that it makes some of them VERY hyper, which is the opposite reaction most humans have. My dog would be frantically annoyingly hyper when I gave it to her. It was hysterical!! Just thought you might enjoy that tidbit. You might be in for a show! I hope the allergy was all it really was and that the heart thing is kinda just there. God cares about the fuzzies among us.

Mrs. Murphy said...

I am so glad Jules is okay!!
that is great news!!
I have loved reading your blogs about your baby boy!! :o) it makes me want one inside of me!!loL!!

Anonymous said...

Glad she is OK. She is a butt shaker? So is Troy... It's too cute!