Take A Seat, This Is a Long One

 Well hello everyone!

In March, a few days after I took my Heartworm pill, I had a seizure.

It was very scary for Toast, who was home alone with me, and he thought I was choking on something and dying because I tried to throw up, fell over and started convulsing.

Bleeder drove home from work as quickly as possible and came into the door and I'm all waggy tailed and excited because Bleeder was excited and I figured I needed to be excited too because one moment I'm at the back of the hallway, and the next moment I'm in the living room and I thought I had mastered the power of space age beaming technology.

Once Bleeder watched the video, she realized that I had a seizure, so then I got to go to the vet, which is a fun car ride, and have blood drawn, which isn't a fun car ride, and then sit and get scritches while Toast and Bleeder talked to the vet in somber tones and watched the video, which isn't pretty.

All manner of things were discussed and they were told to keep a log (it's bad enough that there's video cameras all over, but now they write down my every bowel movement and sneeze). They mentioned epilepsy, and how I may have that, and how they won't give any pills to control that until I start having 3 seizures within a month, and blah blah blah.

So, for the next month my every move and burp was written down and I just went about my business like normal.

Then I got my heartworm pill in April, and shortly after that my annual vaccines and a few days later while Toast and Bleeder were both home... yep, another seizure. Back to the vet, where they discussed the possibility that it was the heartworm pills, but the vet said "oh no, can't be" and they said "um, pretty sure, seems a bit coincidental here", and the vet said "impossible, nah", and they said "alrighty then" and we went home.

We went back later to get some blood for a very extensive Royal Canin DNA test. It tests for all sorts of things, but mainly whether I have a funky MDR1 gene that collies and other breeds have that make them sick when they use Ivermectin (the main Heartworm pill ingredient).

More notes, more watching me.

In May they said screw it, no heartworm pill. In June they said screw it, no heartworm pill... and no seizures.

Now, this is a risky gambit, because Merryland has mosquitos and those mosquitos have the stupid little buggers that infect us with heartworms, but it seemed to be a definitive demonstration that... it was the heartworm pill. So they did their research and found that ALL heartworm pills are generally the same thing, but ALL heartworm medication now comes with various and sundry other parasite stuff that I probably don't need, but NONE of the heartworm medication is JUST heartworm medication, which is BS. Additionally, EVERY single ingredient in those heartworm pills comes with a seizure warning.

My DNA results came back and I'm purebred Siberian Husky going back a ways. I don't have the funky MDR1 thing, and the vet was also surprised to find that even some of the more obscure common dogs things... I don't have, I'm perfect. I could have told him that without needed to give blood.

They opted to switch to Heartgard Plus. They wanted just plain Heartgard, but they don't make that any more, and you can make whatever assumptions you want about companies that shove unnecessary crap into medications, as Bleeder and Toast have already used every four letter word there is about the subject.

Five days after getting the new stuff... you guessed it. At 4:30 in the morning.

The vet sent us to a neurologist, which we went to on Thursday. Nice guy except for shining things in my eye and clipping things to my skin to watch it crawl and move my legs and pinch my toes and then take my blood.

He feels that I probably have epilepsy, and my trigger is heartworm pills, since that's a neurotoxic designed to kill microfilaria, but not the dog... unless the dog gets too much of it, or like me, is sensitive to it.

To test this feeling, he put me on a drug called Leevetiracetam Extended Release. That's hard to say, so we'll just say Lee pills (or generic Keppra). I'll take these pills for a while until after I've taken my heartworm pill at the end of July to see if I have another seizure. If so, then choices will be made on how to proceed. If not, then in the winter, I'll stop taking heartworm pills and wean off of the Lee pills and see what happens then.

As Bleeder calls it, it's a crap sandwich wrapped in more crap, with a dollop of crap on the top and a side of crap.

So, if you've made it this far, I'm fine. I'm a gimpy now, and what more could you expect since every husky Bleeder and Toast have lived with were gimpies. I'm just coming up with new and exciting ways to drive them stark raving mad sooner.

So you all aren't totally bummed out, I'll post more of my adventures to show you that it's just a thing, it sucks, I'm lucky it isn't worse, and even if it does get worse, I'm in good hands. You should feel bad for Toast and Bleeder because they're losing their minds.

-Casey-