Presumably because she’s tired of me writing mostly about kittens, Tink managed to have another one of her Weird Tink Medical Problems last night. For those of you not familiar with Tink’s long and varied medical history, she is a veritable pile of medical difficulties: microphthalmia in both eyes, which means they are small and underdeveloped; a detached retina in her left eye, which means it is completely blind; an optic nerve coloboma in her right eye, a malformation of the eyeball that severely limits her vision; and finally she is mildly affected with Rubber Puppy Disease (also known as Ehlers-Danlos syndrome), which means her skin is more fragile than it ought to be and her ligaments and tendons are stretchier than normal, leaving her joints mildly unstable. There may very well be other stuff going on that just hasn’t been discovered yet.
Anyway, I got home from work last night to find Tink’s blind eye irritated and swollen, with her barely able to open it, and when she did it was nothing but third eyelid in there. Her good eye was about half-covered with the third eyelid, and also had nasty greeny-yellow gunk in it. Eep. I missed getting ahold of her ophthalmologist in Richmond (yes, my dog has a bigger medical team than I do) by five minutes, so called my regular vet at Tidewater Trail Animal Hospital and Dr. Andi was able to see her last night. I love my vet. Anyway, some numbing drops and an eyestain (to look for injuries) later, it was determined that she was just having a horrifying allergic reaction to something. The only thing that has changed in the house is kittens, and I find it hard to believe she’s allergic to them, so who knows what it is.
But now, in addition to her amitriptyline, melatonin, and fish oil, she is to get Benadryl and also a steroid eye gel that will hopefully help calm things down. She was able to keep both eyes open with her third eyelid only covering about a third of her eyes, like normal[1], until the numbing drops wore off, and then she was back to being squinty. So when we went to bed I used a cool compress on her eyes, and she responded by stealing half my pillow. I would grumble, but she’s always clingy[2] when she isn’t feeling well. This morning, both eyes were open until she went back to bed with the other dogs on the futon. Fingers crossed we can keep them that way!
[1] NORMAL IS RELATIVE. IN AN ACTUALLY STATISTICALLY NORMAL DOG, THE THIRD EYELID COVERS ALMOST NONE OF THE EYEBALL WHILE THE DOG IS AWAKE. BUT BECAUSE TINK’S EYEBALLS ARE TINY, THE THIRD EYELID NEVER ACTUALLY RETRACTS ALL THE WAY FOR HER.
[2] AGAIN, EVERYTHING IS RELATIVE. AS A DOBERMAN, SHE IS WHAT YOU WOULD CALL A “VELCRO DOG” MOST OF THE TIME ANYWAY, EXCEPT SHE CAN BE PERSUADED TO STICK TO ZILLE SOMETIMES SO I CAN GET THINGS DONE. UNLESS SHE’S NOT FEELING WELL, AT WHICH POINT SHE NEEDS TO BE TOUCHING ME CONSTANTLY AND NO ONE ELSE WILL DO.
