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Amantadine?

Rdituro

Active member
Hello everyone,
So it's been almost 6weeks since Winston's decompression surgery for CM & SM and he's doing ok. Surgery wounds have healed nicely. He had a recheck with the regular neurologist yesterday & I explained to her that he's still scratching his head & rubbing his head in the floor periodically. She did say its not even 6 weeks & it is going to take a long time for him to feel a lot better. She also said she would like to try using Amantadine on him. It's a anti flu drug that they've used with some success. She is going to consult the neurosurgeon & let me know if we can start that. He's still on 100mg of Gabapentin 3X a day along with Tramadol 3X a day & omeprazole once a day. I was wondering if any of you have used Amantadine?
 
Ella was off and on Amantadine and because I usually made several adjustments to medications at one time, it is really hard for me to say if it was beneficial. Looking back, I now think one should just change one to see the effects because of this reason. I believe we started the amantadine before prednisone and then towards the end we added back the amantadine and she did seem to do better. I wish I could give more information except that I "think" it helped. I am sorry Winston is still rubbing his head and scratching but the neurologist did say it may take some time to heal. I remember thinking that after surgery Ella would be immediately healed but unfortunately that is not what happens. They can get some relief but it is not a cure (which you know) but with Winston it may stop the progression which on the plus side gives you time to make changes and additions to medications to find what really works best for Winston.

Good luck
 
I remember thinking that after surgery Ella would be immediately healed but unfortunately that is not what happens. They can get some relief but it is not a cure (which you know) but with Winston it may stop the progression which on the plus side gives you time to make changes and additions to medications to find what really works best for Winston.
I don't have any experience with Amantadine but I just wanted to echo what Anne said about the post-op course after SM surgery. I too wanted to see Riley come out of surgery as a healed dog, but like Ella and like Winston, she wasn't. It certainly is trial and error in terms of the right medication for your dog. What is important is to remember what Anne touched on - that the surgery hopefully bought you time to give Winston a better quality of life. Eventually you'll get the medication cocktail right so that he's pretty comfortable. He may never be symptom free and I don't think you should look for that as your goal. Five years later, I know we stopped the progression of Riley's SM with surgery and she's living a good life, not symptom free by any means, but a good life.
 
Yes thank you so much. I guess I'm trying to find the right meds for him at this point. The doctors words always echo in my head "he has an 80% chance of some sort of improvement but he will never be cured or 100%".
 
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