My Dog Died Because of Undiagnosed HP
Posted: Thu Jan 13, 2011 11:00 pm
Thank you so much for this website and forum. In 2004, my bulldog rescue was autoimmune compromised from months of treatment for skin disease and two surgeries - a tail amputation and abdominal Cryptorchid tumor removal.
He started out apropos of nothing, vomiting yellow bile. My experienced vet was out of town and his junior partner prescribed pepcid. At the time I thought it odd but did it. Several weeks later, still under vet care, his occurances increased and finally he vomited severely. From that time on, he could not keep food in his mouth or swallow.
As it happens, he contracted Megaesophagus (ME)from the violent vomiting coupled with being immune compromised. (That disease is gi and neuro combo). When a dog has ME he has trouble swallowing food and keeping it down, because the esophagus has lost elasticity due to some break in the connection to the brain. They regurgitate food and water stuck in the esophagus and also what is in the stomach.
Not to be confused with vomiting (a clear difference if you watch the abdomen) wherein vomiting has another underlying condition that you have to diagnose. ME does not produce vomiting and yellow bile all the time and usually a gi disorder does. With ME you see effortless regurgitation without heaving of the abdomen.
ME can mostly always be diagnosed by a barium swallow series on xray. You should never do a scope unless you're desperate because the dangers of the procedure can make things much worse. The anesthesia, trauma from the scope and also human error performing it.
ME is most often fatal. But I insisted in knowing the underlying condition so I had him scoped. (also life threatening for a dog especially in this condition).
The scope and tissue culture pathology dx'd Helicobacter P (raging case), a large bleeding ulcer, and IBD.
The vet (a local famous Internist specialist) prescribed one antibiotic and Carafate/Sucralfate. I FOUND DR MARSHALL's treatments online - triple and quadruple therapy - and had to fight with the vet to PROVE my dog needed a different protocol but he essentially refused. I went back to my local senior vet who IMMEDIATELY prescribed the quad therapy.
Thank goodness for Carafate, too.
He also provided Reglan, a motility med that had tremendous adverse side effects that made my poor dog act like he was on LSD. At the time, these side effects were denied by the industry but my research showed (by a survey with other people with dogs on the medication on a forum like this)...that 75% of the dogs had the same serious side effects including near death. This is because Megaesophagus is also neurological so Reglan impacts them double hard.
Reglan, when it works, moves the food down through the gi tract faster, speeding up motility so that in theory the dog won't regurgitate it. Most people who use it without severe side effects in their dogs will lower the dosage to the threshold level that hides obvious symptoms, but you STILL see some...like being neurotic or aggressive or anxious or unpredictable, or hiding for no reason etc.
Anyway, the entire event was dramatic including me getting meds compounded by my compounding pharmacy in the effort to get them to "stay down".
My sweet dog, heroic and stoic throughout, had to be euthanized a month later. His condition was so far gone, and only a feeding tube MAY have helped but he was in no shape for that surgery and ME is not statistically reversible in this case. The "yellow bile" took too long to improve, he was still vomiting that small amount of food that he could even ingest and nothing was absorbing. (the food he could eat was thanks to a custom vertical feeding chair and 5-6 meals per day sitting in it 30 minutes each time where you either toss meatballs down directly into the stomach or use a milkshake texture that should go directly down, avoiding the loose pockets of muscle tissue that lost elasticity in the esohpagus ).
Any pet owner who finds this site, I hope will read this post and know that there is HELP for your dog, but you must advocate and show the research here. There are OTHER side effects to the therapies and you have to find the antibiotics that don't cause these other adverse reactions.
Thank you for your research, publications and for being there when I needed answers.
He started out apropos of nothing, vomiting yellow bile. My experienced vet was out of town and his junior partner prescribed pepcid. At the time I thought it odd but did it. Several weeks later, still under vet care, his occurances increased and finally he vomited severely. From that time on, he could not keep food in his mouth or swallow.
As it happens, he contracted Megaesophagus (ME)from the violent vomiting coupled with being immune compromised. (That disease is gi and neuro combo). When a dog has ME he has trouble swallowing food and keeping it down, because the esophagus has lost elasticity due to some break in the connection to the brain. They regurgitate food and water stuck in the esophagus and also what is in the stomach.
Not to be confused with vomiting (a clear difference if you watch the abdomen) wherein vomiting has another underlying condition that you have to diagnose. ME does not produce vomiting and yellow bile all the time and usually a gi disorder does. With ME you see effortless regurgitation without heaving of the abdomen.
ME can mostly always be diagnosed by a barium swallow series on xray. You should never do a scope unless you're desperate because the dangers of the procedure can make things much worse. The anesthesia, trauma from the scope and also human error performing it.
ME is most often fatal. But I insisted in knowing the underlying condition so I had him scoped. (also life threatening for a dog especially in this condition).
The scope and tissue culture pathology dx'd Helicobacter P (raging case), a large bleeding ulcer, and IBD.
The vet (a local famous Internist specialist) prescribed one antibiotic and Carafate/Sucralfate. I FOUND DR MARSHALL's treatments online - triple and quadruple therapy - and had to fight with the vet to PROVE my dog needed a different protocol but he essentially refused. I went back to my local senior vet who IMMEDIATELY prescribed the quad therapy.
Thank goodness for Carafate, too.
He also provided Reglan, a motility med that had tremendous adverse side effects that made my poor dog act like he was on LSD. At the time, these side effects were denied by the industry but my research showed (by a survey with other people with dogs on the medication on a forum like this)...that 75% of the dogs had the same serious side effects including near death. This is because Megaesophagus is also neurological so Reglan impacts them double hard.
Reglan, when it works, moves the food down through the gi tract faster, speeding up motility so that in theory the dog won't regurgitate it. Most people who use it without severe side effects in their dogs will lower the dosage to the threshold level that hides obvious symptoms, but you STILL see some...like being neurotic or aggressive or anxious or unpredictable, or hiding for no reason etc.
Anyway, the entire event was dramatic including me getting meds compounded by my compounding pharmacy in the effort to get them to "stay down".
My sweet dog, heroic and stoic throughout, had to be euthanized a month later. His condition was so far gone, and only a feeding tube MAY have helped but he was in no shape for that surgery and ME is not statistically reversible in this case. The "yellow bile" took too long to improve, he was still vomiting that small amount of food that he could even ingest and nothing was absorbing. (the food he could eat was thanks to a custom vertical feeding chair and 5-6 meals per day sitting in it 30 minutes each time where you either toss meatballs down directly into the stomach or use a milkshake texture that should go directly down, avoiding the loose pockets of muscle tissue that lost elasticity in the esohpagus ).
Any pet owner who finds this site, I hope will read this post and know that there is HELP for your dog, but you must advocate and show the research here. There are OTHER side effects to the therapies and you have to find the antibiotics that don't cause these other adverse reactions.
Thank you for your research, publications and for being there when I needed answers.