Jada’s journey

Jada loved to sleep in my bed. One day around 2:00 am, I felt her kicking her legs. Thinking she was dreaming, I patted her to stop. She kept paddling and that’s when I say her peeing and foaming at the mouth. I yelled at her but she continued and then slid off the bed. I went to touch her and she growled at me. She had never shown aggressiveness before. My husband was so upset that he said to call the dog pound, she had gone crazy.

I grabbed my iPad and plugged in the behaviors. Gran mal seizure explained what was happening. I called the vet the following day and was told to keep an eye on her. Sure enough, she had another and another. My other dog would run downstairs every time she seized, alerting us.

She was prescribed phenobarbital and I kept a journal of when, how long and how often. I joined a canine epilepsy group online and learned lots of techniques to cope and to help her. For a period of two years she averaged 2-3 episodes a week.

Then all hell broke loose. She had 9 seizures in 12 hours. We ended up in the ER where she was kept overnight and started on a loading dose of potassium bromide. We reduced the KBR because she had ataxia and could barely walk. We ended up giving her 2 tabs of PB and 1 capsule of KBR. That was the right combination as she remained seizure free for the next 5 years.

The seizures were a minor issue for my girl. The last two years of her life were really tough. She had a metal plate put in her knee, two surgeries for soft tissue sarcoma, one involved a skin graft, where skin from her stomach was used to cover the grapefruit sized hole left by removing the cancer. I decided against a third surgery when the cancer returned.

Then one day she had a horrible cough. She was diagnosed with heart failure. The university of Minnesota took her in on an emergency basis because she wasn’t eating. Oh yes, I forgot to add that she became diabetic and had to eat in order to get her insulin. Once at the U she was diagnosed with DCM and given 6-12 months to live. I went to pick her up and was told they wanted to keep her for the night as she was having trouble breathing. I got a call an hour later to tell me she was “gone”.It’s been 7 months since I lost her and I miss her every day. If she had just had seizures, I would have welcomed it.