Caraline

We’ve reached a crossroad with Scarlett (11 ½ year old Boxer). The past month has seen a very rapid deterioration in her condition. Despite an increase in her anti-epileptic medications, her seizures have increased to about 5 per week. More problematic though is that during her non-seizure times her quality of life seems to have plunged. She is now having difficulty walking without falling, stands there staring into the nothingness until she falls over and then gets back up to continue staring into the nothingness again and she has also developed some really strange obsessive behaviours. She has become stone deaf and though we know she is not blind, her cognition is not right and she will walk into a cupboard & get lost there or walk off a top step as though she were on a flat surface. We honestly do not know whether this is caused by brain damage that is occurring during the seizures or if it is a side effect of the heavy duty drugs she has to take.

So with our hearts in our throat we have decided to wean her off the Epilim and just keep her on her Phenobarbital for the time being. One of 3 things will happen. She may continue to have seizures but have a better quality of life regardless, her seizures may spin totally out of control, or everything will just go downhill in a screaming heap.

The bottom line is that if there is no improvement in her quality of life we think we have reached the time where we must consider PTS. Back in November we didn’t think she would make it to last Christmas, and since then I’ve wished for her that she would just go easily in her sleep one night, but it seems that an easy departure is not going to be hers unless we help her along. I feel terribly sad that it has come to this. She deserves a better twilight time than she is having.