Belly Trouble

This last week or so Zack has been having his bouts of belly pain on and off again. Normally it is just a one off, I give him his meds and he is fine later that same day and then is back to normal. However, this last week he has had a few setbacks.

It is always the same thing that happens, around 4 - 5 a.m. I am awakened by loud squelching noises in his belly and then he starts to squirm because he is in pain. Never any diarrhea. On Tuesday morning he had a really bad bout and was vomiting too. I gave him his meds and pepcid but he threw them back up. I took the morning off work on Tuesday because I was worried about leaving him. The vet then prescribed him to stay on his anti-inflammatories for 7 days rather than one treatment which he has been on now for 2 days. Yesterday Zack seemed to be back to his old self, bright, happy, eating, tearing round the garden, playing with other dogs, etc. perfectly normal and I thought great the anti-inflammatories are working. But then at 5 a.m. this morning the same thing happened, although no vomiting this time.

Another trip to the vets to have him checked over and this time have a complete bloodwork panel done. Luckily everything came back normal including his white blood cell count. When he was sick as a puppy his white blood cell count was off the charts so I was so relieved to hear his WBC was normal.

Then Dr. Nagy advised that she thinks he could have been born with a stricture, a defect in his bowel where the small intestine meets the large intestine, and as his normal poop moves through his bowel overnight it sometimes causes irritation and flares up and then the squelchy belly noises are his intestines trying to move the poop through the stricture causing pain. It make sense that that is what could be happening.

Dr. Nagy said it is something he may just have to live with these bouts but if it gets alot worse down the road there were two options that she said could be done to find out and that is an exploratory surgery where they open him up and check his stomach and intestines and remove anything that is bad looking or have an endoscopy done up in Calgary to check inside his bowels. She didn't recommend either of these procedures at this time as she felt he isn't bad enough yet and it is treatable and I definitely don't want to have any invasive procedure done to Zack unless I have to. Hopefully it won't come to this but inevitably we will do what we have to to get to the bottom of it.

Zack is to stay on his anti-inflammatories and also if he gets a real painful bout again we were sent home with trammadol to give him to ease his discomfort.

Glad to say I got home tonight and Zack ate his dinner and is much brighter. Fingers crossed this phase is over.