Sept and still living with mega-esophagus

Can't believe that we've made it this far with Roland. Things are pretty much the same.

Last night we did have an issue with our other dog - Maggie the whippet. After 3 hours at the vet today, she is starting to get better, but she has idiopathic geriatric vestibular disease. At it's worst this morning, she wouldn't even try to stand. By late this afternoon she was trying to stand and walk, but still not interested in food or water. She did get 350 cc of subcutaneous fluid at the vet's office.

Roland's regimen has not changed except that we now give him 10 mg of bethanechol at every meal (3 times a day). He still has good days and bad days. Last night was a bad night. It was especially bad for the humans in the family because we had to take care of 2 sick dogs. Roland had one of his bad events where he blurps repeatedly and looks quite distressed. He has recovered from this one fairly quickly. He ate a little breakfast and most of his dinner. He also wants to know why his sister is getting the good stuff. I don't think she has ever been sicker than him and he certainly doesn't get it. I'll admit that he's gotten spoiled with this illness.

July update

Photo is from his first agility trial at age 2.

I can't believe how long it's been since I posted an update. Things have been relatively stable - although gradually getting worse. Roland blurps nearly every day. He had 2 of the episodes where he blurps repeatedly over several hours within a 2 week period. We thought it might be the end, but he recovered back to baseline after the second event fairly quickly. Recently he went almost 2 days without blurping, but emptied pretty well tonight. He's clearly lost weight, but is generally hanging in there.

Bad Day

Just a short update. Frustrating day. Came home to find blurps all over the house. Couple looked dry and old - like from early in the morning. A couple were mostly water with some grass. This suggests that he wasn't feeling well. However, when I got home from work he did not act like he was feeling bad. He ate dinner well and looks comfortable. Sure wish we knew what to expect with this disease.

May update

Things have been pretty status quo for about a month now. Back in April we had a very bad stretch of a couple of weeks. One of Roland's back toenails came off. Of course it happened just before bedtime on a Sun evening. It's been so long since a toe nail came off that I couldn't find all the stuff. Finally got the bleeding stopped and got to bed. The nail bled off and on for several days.

That Thurs we had an appointment with our vet. She thought he looked great. His weight is holding steady. We reviewed the dosing of bethanechol and discussed what the projectile blurping might be about. No real resolutions. I think we are all guessing at this point. His toe looked fine when she examined it.

The next day and over the weekend, Roland had a really bad time. He was blurping up almost everything that he ate and he did not look well. We also noticed that his toe was swelling some and bleeding again. We were soaking his foot, but it wasn't getting any better. I called the vet and she agreed to treat his toe with an additional antibiotic, which I picked up on Tues. For the next 10 days he got the antibiotic (cephalosporin) and I stopped his tetracycline. I was worried that his SLO might flare up, but cephalosporins don't work well when given with tetracycline. After a couple of days, the swelling in the toe went down and his blurping reduced in frequency and volume. By the end of the 2 weeks, he was back to his baseline.

The main outcome of this episode is that if Roland blurps more than once a day, I increase his sucralfate to 3 times a day. When he has the episodes of repeated blurping and panting it does appear that he has esophageal irritation and the sucralfate should help with this. We've also increased his bethanechol to a total of 20 mg/day - 5 at breakfast, 5 at dinner and 10 before bed. In the past month, he rarely goes a day without blurping but it is often predictable - when he is either excited or drinks a bunch of water, or gets too hot, etc.

A couple of weeks ago he did have one day when the blurp had a different consistency. Usually it is clear liquid with identifiable undigested food. This one day it was darker brown and more even in consistency - more like stomach contents, but without bile.

In our case, as the saying goes - No news is good news. We cannot believe that we lived with megaesophagus for 17 months, but we'll take every day that we can have.

Update mid-March

Photo is Roland at age 9.

Nothing really new to report. Roland seems about the same. He had done well for several days and then a couple of nights ago, he got us up in the middle of the night to clean up a couple of blurps. Last night - no problems. He's also not blurped during the day for over a week. He's due to go back to the vet for a checkup. It will be interesting to see what he weighs. I don't think he's lost any weight.

Update

Just another update. Roland's had a bad week so far. Came home from work yesterday to find a trail of blurps to the doggy door. They were all small spots, but we haven't seen that since the night we took him to the emergency clinic. However, he didn't seem distressed and slept through the night without blurping. It's so hard to figure this disease out.

Another strange thing has happened lately - 3 times to be exact - in about a 3 week period. He's had episodes of what I would have called projectile vomiting, but it's mostly clear liquid and a little bit of kibble. So, I guess I should call it projectile blurp, but that doesn't make sense. The liquid comes out with force and a clear stream. In fact, it splashed. For a dog that's not supposed to have any motility in his esophagus something sure contracted or spasmed. We've discussed this round and round. Perhaps his dose of bethanechol is too high, maybe he has another condition in addition to the megaesophagus or maybe something that we haven't thought of. The third time this happened it was first thing in the morning and he had not eaten yet - or had his pills. Our conclusion is that it's not caused by too much bethanechol. If so, you would expect the symptom to happen shortly after a dose, not right before the next one. Who knows though? Anybody out there with any experience with this??

Update

Photo is from an agility trial when he was about 5.

It was a holiday weekend, which are often not good around here. However, Roland did quite well this weekend. I thought he'd get through the whole day today without blurping, but had one small blurp this evening. He desperately wanted to play/interact, so I got a handful of training treats. Thought I'd try to train a new behavior. He got so excited that he blurped. Not unusual, that's why we try not to get him too excited. But, he's hard to resist when he wants attention. For an old guy, he's still one cute dude. I'm going to have to figure out how to upload photos to the blog.