Old Dog Vestibular Sydrome

["Carolyn Burgess" <carolyn_burgess@hotmail.com>]

Margie:

I'm sending this to Ridecamp as well, since this is a subject that other 
people will be dealing with.  I lost my dog in 1999 to Vestibular Sydrome.  
There are two causes of Vestibular Syndrome, one benign, one terminal and 
they are not related in any way other than the outward symptoms.  One is 
caused by an inner ear problem, which is not the version my dog had.  The 
other is a tumor in or around the brain stem (which is what my dog had).  It 
started with her at around 13 years old, all of a sudden having difficulty 
standing, and her head was tilted to the side.  She also was drooling 
heavily.  The vet knew what it was immediately, but at the time lead me to 
believe that it was easily treatable and she would resolve back to normal.  
He said it could resolve on its own (the inner ear cause), or that a shot of 
cortisone would resolve it (which it did - and if it does, then you have the 
tumor).  At that time, she got to shots of cortisone, and she resolved in 
about 3 days and was back to about 90% of previous normal in about 2 weeks.  
She always had mobility issues from a fractured pelvis at the age of 4 
months.  So it was hard to tell what was residual from the broken hip 13 
years later, or from the residual of Vestibular Syndrome.

She was fine for over a year and then almost a year later, she had another 
"attack".  This time it was much more severe and the 1st shot of cortisone 
did not work.  We brought her back to the vet 48 hours later, they gave her 
another really big shot of cortisone, which 24 hours later started to work.  
At that point, the vet told me about the two causes of Vestibular Syndrome 
and that my dog probably had a tumor.  I have always given all of my animals 
everything that I would I would do medically for any other member of my 
family, so I wanted the tumor removed.  I didn't care about cost.  I was 
told that these tumors are usually benign, but the are not operable because 
of there location.  Surgery would kill my dog.  But the good news is that 
cortisone is a good way to treat it.  The cortisone will shrink the tumor so 
that they can get reasonably back to normal.  My dog lost alot of weight 
before the attack, which was also caused by the tumor, but that the 
cortisone would increase her appetite and help her to gain weight.  This 
second attack happened in early Fall of 1998.  She was on daily cortisone 
pills for the remainder of her life, which ended in February 1999.  The good 
thing about the cortisone is that it should get them almost back to normal.  
But when it stops working, the tumor will become debilitating almost 
immediately.  In our case, the dog collapsed on a Saturday night and was 
never able to get up again.  She was fully conscious and cognative, but just 
could not stand or walk.

I wish I could give you good news about this, but in my case, I got a good 8 
months more with my dog, maybe even more like 1 1/2 years, because of the 
cortisone, than I would have otherwise have had.  I am very happy for that 
time.

Carolyn Burgess

_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp