Thank you all for your comments. I appreciate your support at this time. I know so many of you have lost pets recently, so I apologize for going into it again today. I felt I needed to pass on some information as a result of what has happened.
What I have learned this week since Misty passed is about a seizure the veterinarian casually called ‘
the chewing gum seizure.’
I wish I had heard of it before, even years before. I didn’t realize my dogs had been having them. It doesn’t look like a seizure in its earlier, less violent stages. Now that I know about it, I want to pass it on to other pet owners. If you see your dog having one, you’ll know to call the vet, discuss what to do about it, and find out what’s causing it.
It’s very benign and innocent looking in the beginning. Amusing, curious, odd… not words that would alarm you like disturbing, frightening, and a medical emergency. Yet all those encompass the range of adjectives which I would label these seizures with the harmless sounding name.
‘Chewing gum’ doesn’t sound threatening, but that’s what it looks like your pet is doing when it first begins. The dog looks like she is biting at the air, as if she were trying to catch a fly near her nose, or trying to dislodge a stray hair stuck in her mouth… Misty had lots of moustache/beard hair around her mouth… we’d thought she was trying to get the hair out of her mouth.
It lasts a mere second or two when it happens gently… so quick you could almost miss it if you didn’t know about this sneaky little seizure. I don't think it leaves their mouth area wet and slobbery at this stage, but the longer it lasts, the wetter the mouth area becomes. I didn’t know any of this when I came home Monday night. I learned about it the next day, when I was able to get online and search the disorder known as “chewing gum seizure.”
I had come home from school Monday afternoon, rushing straight home as I usually do to let her out. She is my primary concern at the end of the school day. I neither like thinking about her waiting for us to come home when she has to go to the bathroom, nor waiting in a state of aloneness for the duration of a workday.
By the time I get home, she’s been in the house, or in the dog pen, for 10-12 hours.I know she will do her best not to leave a puddle or a pile in the house. She’s had a few accidents over the years, all forgiven, no consequences. It usually means she couldn’t wait any longer when they happened. We were never mad at her when it happened… I always felt guilty when it happened because it was our negligence, in a way, that created the situation in which she had to wait all day, holding, holding, until she could hold no longer. I could tell she felt shame when it happened. Dogs don’t like to soil their den, and our home is their den.
When I got home Monday, it was about 5:00 pm. She was not in her usual position standing in the middle of the living room floor, tail wagging furiously when I walked through the door. I had already gotten used to her quiet greeting without Max. He was the barker, and she’d joined in. While he was with us, their barking (in miniature schnauzer fashion) was alertingly loud, but I loved to hear it. We never silenced their greetings unless we had company, thinking it offended others. Sometimes I wondered how Cesar Millan would respond to their happy barking, but since it was not an annoyance to us, we allowed it. For thirteen years we allowed it.
She wasn’t in my computer room, nor the kitchen, dining room, or spare bedroom. I checked the front deck and the basement. Finally, I looked into our bedroom, and there she was, standing quietly, her tail just barely wagging. Her ears drooping, her head not too high.
I spoke to her, “Misty! What are you doing in here? Are you okay? Let’s go outside…” and I apologized for being gone so long… But she wouldn’t follow me down the hall, so I picked her up. That’s when I noticed the slobbery wet beard and mustache… I had no idea then what had caused it.
I set her down on the grass outside, but she was wobbly on her feet. She didn’t act like she wanted to go to the bathroom, her breathing looked labored, and there was a cough. All bad signs. I took her to the vet immediately.
I had no idea that within four hours we would be talking about life and death options, nor that in five hours, we’d be carrying her lifeless body home for yet another burial.
The x-rays showed fluid building up in her lungs, and an enlarged heart. It looked like congestive heart, or cardiomyopathy, the vet said. She had suggested I take Misty to the Emergency Animal Hospital (which left me with no fond memories, as you know) for the night. I expressed my anxiety and concerns for taking her there, and asked if there was something we could do for Misty to help her through the night, yet keep her at home with us. Then we’d bring her back to the vet first thing in the morning. The doctor gave her a medication to help ease her breathing, and a diuretic to remove the fluids.
Then she described a few symptoms to watch out for, including coughing, labored breathing, a pinkish discharge, and seizures. When she described the physical appearance of the seizure, and gave it the name… ‘chewing gum seizure,’ I recognized it instantly. She even described the slobbery discharge from the mouth. “I’ve seen her do that before,” I said. That would explain the wet beard I saw when I came home. She said it’s very possibly that Misty would get worse during the night, and we will want to take her to the vet. If she was dying, she assured us, it wasn’t going to be pretty. She gave me some pills to give her every eight hours, and some for every twelve hours.
We took her home. She seemed okay, breathing had eased. She laid on the floor, and we sat beside her. We talked to her soothingly, petting her, making her feel comfortable and safe, we hoped.
Both of us were so worried. All the thoughts we’d had were about what we should do. Should we let her continue like this while they tried to find the cause of her condition? Her heart was giving out. She was thirteen years old. Could we expect her to have a more, or less, comfortable and happy life now?
Then the first big seizure hit her. It began as the ‘chewing gum’ seizure… and quickly escalated into the more violent form. Steve held her close to him the entire time, telling her it was okay, telling her he had her, like she was a baby.
The seizure lasted about 3 minutes from beginning to end, whenshe was quiet and calm again. She looked afraid. That was all I could handle … I couldn’t watch this. It could continue all night until she died. I told my husband if this is what her (and our) night was going to be like, forget it. I wanted to take her to the hospital right now and let them medicate her to ease the seizures, in case she were to have another one.
We drove her to the Emergency Animal Hospital. I couldn’t hold her. I was afraid it would happen in the car, and I don’t think I could have held her as well as Steve had. So I drove. She had another seizure while we were waiting to see the doctor. She was whisked away into another room where they treated her. They gave her valium. It calmed her down, but she was unaware that we were there.
Meanwhile, the doctor had come to talk with us. There were expensive tests they wanted to do to find the cause of the seizures. It could be a brain tumor, it could be epilepsy. Then there was the condition of her heart, the fluid in her lungs.
Finally, the doctor told us that during the last seizure, there was a pink discharge coming from her nose… which pointed to blood in her lungs.
I asked the question I had wanted to ask the vet who treated Max two months ago: “If this was your pet, what would you do?” I never voiced the question two months ago because I didn’t realize he was dying.
But I knew this time, and I asked it of her. “What would you do if she were your pet?”
Quietly she said the words, “I’d put her to sleep.”
Steve and I looked at each other. It had been on our minds all that evening. Guilt followed… that we had already considered it. I said the words next. "We want to put her to sleep, then." The doctor nodded, then left the examining room so we could have some privacy.
The vet assistant carried her back to us laying on a beautiful, cream-colored, blanket… embroidered with a silky, shiny flower pattern. She was sleeping from the valium. She didn’t even know we were thinking what we were thinking. I’m glad she didn’t know. I don’t know if I could have looked her in the eyes if she had been alert. But if she were alert, I’m sure we wouldn’t have been thinking about putting her down.
We were with her until the end, petting her, whispering encouraging words into her ear, that we loved her, that we'd miss her so much, and promising her that Max was waiting for her.
She probably didn't hear us. We knew that. The words were for us, for our own ears.
It was fast. Surprisingly fast. Shestopped breathing. She was gone. It was far more peaceful than what we had witnessed earlier in the safety and comfort of our own home.
There was relief knowing that she wasn’t in pain.
There was pain knowing that our home would be so quiet without her. Without either of them.
