By Joel Thurtell
We nearly lost our star columnist.
Last time I wrote about Peppermint Patti, she’d undergone surgery to repair a snapped anterior cruciate ligament. They shaved her left hind leg and a veterinary surgeon reconnected the ligament in her knee. It was not a happy time for a writer, and Patti wasn’t motivated to pen her column.
Last summer, she had a grand time exploring the rugged terrain around our cottage in McGregor Bay. She scared the mink away from our dock and chased the squirrels into their trees.
This summer, following the vet’s orders, we kept Patti inside, mostly. As she felt better and her leg got stronger, we let her out more. I gave her swimming lessons at our dock.
But something happened that was not good for Patti.
Something happened that nearly killed her.
This is the dog who, as a puppy, gobbled up some rat poison and got very sick. We took her to a vet who scoffed at my description of an iridescent green poop I found on our back lawn. The vet said he would not believe she ate D-Con unless I could say I’d seen her do it. I could not, and so he sent us home. Patti got weaker and weaker and finally, we took her to an emergency vet service where they saved her life.
This is the dog who managed to jump high onto a desk and dislodge a large bar of dark chocolate, which she ate. Again, a very sick Patti and back to the emergency vet service to save her life.
This is also the dog who tried to chase a squirrel up a tree and impaled herself on a downed maple branch. Back to the emergency vet.
Then came the snapped ACL and you’d think Peppermint Patti would give her death wish a rest.
This time, though, her only mistake was an activity we all do all the time: breathing. Being alive.
I noticed her coughing here in the Bay when I had her swim a few feet to shore.Thought maybe she got some water in her throat.
The coughing continued, and got worse. It was hurting her to cough. She lost energy. Our speedy little dog, our little white bullet, was nearly comatose.
No interest in chasing squirrels.
The mink got brave and started fooling around the dock.
At that insolence, Patti got motivated, yet had no energy for the chase.
What could be wrong with our beloved little dog?
The word is “blastomycosis,” but we didn’t hear it till almost too late.
We were home in Michigan last week and pretty worried about Patti.
She’s a ca. 15-pound mix of bichon, maybe, and who knows what else,
but the best dog in the whole world. A happy, kindhearted (except to
squirrels, which she calls “bush-tails”) little dog who has brightened our lives at some low times.
Home in Michigan, the first vet examined her a week ago Monday and found nothing wrong, other than the cough. Heart strong, breathing normal. Sent us home with mild cough syrup.
My wife, an M.D., was not satisfied with his failure to
diagnose. A friend recommended another vet, so we took her to the new
doc a week ago today. This vet is very thorough and ordered x-rays
and a blood workup. The pictures showed a cloudy area near Patti’s
heart. The blood testing showed an elevated white cell count.
Theory: the unidentified mass was crowding her trachia, causing the cough. Diagnosis: pneumonia or maybe cancer. We were to try treating her with
antibiotics and give her a powerful human cough suppressant with
codeine.
Things got worse, fast. Patti’s eyes gummed up with mucous. We found sores
on her chin and side. The codeine made her almost comatose. At J & G Marina on Birch Island, I talked to Harold McGregor. He recommended a vet office in Mindemoya.
I googled and found the Islands Animal Hospital. Couldn’t get through
on Monday — holiday in Canada. So we drove Patti down to Mindemoya, a town in central Manitoulin Island, on August 3, 2010 and found Dr. Cathy Seabrook.
Dr. Seabrook, aka “savvydoc,” knew right away what is hurting Patti. Coughing? X-rays show cloudy area near heart? Sores? Infected eyes? Blasto!
As Elizabeth Quinn pointed out in her excellent article, linked above, our vets and physicians in urban and suburban areas don’t see blasto and often don’t think of it when they see its signs.
In Georgian Bay last year, one human and three dogs died of blasto because they were not correctly diagnosed and tgreated.
Without Dr. Seabrook, we were on track to lose Patti.
Blasto is a fungus that lives in damp earth near bodies of water. Well, that would be us in McGregor Bay. The spores can be inhaled into the lungs. They love that environment and multiply, traveling through the blood to other areas where they thrive, such as the eyes. They commonly cause infections on the skin.
“Multi-systemic,” Dr. Seabrook told us.
While there is no surefire diagnosis, the manifestation of infections in eyes and skin, the presence of a cloudy area in the lungs all point to blasto.
Patti is lucky. The fungus is not yet well-seated in her lungs. According to Dr. Seabrook, she sees cases of animals with “snowstorms” in the photos of their lungs. Patti did not have a snowstorm in her x-ray.
It is not too late to help her.
We now have two kinds of drops for her eyes, an antifungal medication to treat the
blasto and anti-pain meds. Less than 24 hours later, she seems to feel better.
Not cured — that could take a couple months. But improving.
And we’re concerned about her right eye, because the pupil was really small. In
addition to drops for both eyes, we have special drops for that eye to prevent the pupil from setting in that small position. The fear is that she may lose some or all of the sight in that eye.
Blasto is real in McGregor Bay. It may be real on other areas where veterinarians and physicians aren’t tuned to it and therefore don’t see it when it’s looking right at them.
Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com
