Phoebe's latest health issues.

This sweet girl is not feeling well and it just breaks my heart.

 I took her in last week for her Percortin shot, which she gets every 25 days to keep her "up".  In addition, she has a bad hip and had not been putting any weight on it for over a week and a half.  The vet had instructed me to increase her steroid and give her pain meds twice a day (which I did)  but it didn't seem to help much at all. She wasn't putting any weight on her back leg at all.  In addition, the night prior to her scheduled shot, I thought I heard her wheezing.  I tried to listen to her lungs with my stethoscope, but she wouldn't stay still long enough for me to hear what was going on.  I thought I heard crackles and wheezes but I couldn't tell for sure. So instead of just going in for her shot, I asked to see the vet because I knew my girl wasn't feeling good - at all.

She ended up staying the day at the vet for some xrays and some blood work, and then I got the call.

It's never a good sign when the office calls to schedule a pick up appointment rather than the vet just calling me with the test results.

When we got there for our pick up appointment, the vet brought us back to show us what is going on with our sweet Phoebe. The good news was that her blood work all looked good.  As expected, her bad hip still looked bad, but in addition, her knee also has very bad arthritis.  I had been warned way back when she was a puppy that it was likely that she would suffer from arthritis in that bad hip, but it didn't really cross my mind that her knees would give her trouble too.  She also had a urinary tract infection, which I had suspected due to the increase in her steroids in the effort to ease the inflammation in her hip.

The worst news of all however is that her trachea is collapsing.  I was right when I thought I heard crackles and wheezing.  The vet was surprised that Phoebe is breathing as well as she is with such narrowing in her trachea. She isn't coughing, which is usually one of the signs, but she is definitely having some issues.  There is not much that can be done other than try to manage her symptoms.  It doesn't help that she is overweight which puts extra strain on her body.

We are in a tough spot.  She needs the steroids to feel better, but they make her extra hungry and she can't really exercise because of her pain and her breathing.  We are trying to cut back on her portions, but with three other dogs in the house, it's kind of hard to make sure she gets only what she is supposed to have.

I am not handling this very well.  It makes me so sad and scares me at the same time.  She is on medication that has to be given every 8 hours, and I know she doesn't really feel good.  I will not let her suffer but I'm so afraid that we are going to get into a crisis.  For now, I'm going to keep giving her her meds and see how we do.  It's been a rough year.