Who knew they had veterinary internists?

I've alluded to the fact that Megabyte (Meg) has been having some issues lately. Unfortunately, this is not the first time we've gone round and round with Meg and issues. This specific issue, excessive thirst (and I mean excessive - as in drinking a gallon of water in a 10 hour time period. To put it in perspective, an average dog drinks 1 Cup of water for every 10 pounds. Meg weighs 16 pounds, so 1.5 Cups a day is all she should need) and the excessive peeing that comes as part of drinking that much water, is one that we've dealt with, off and on, for three ish years. (By off and on I simply mean that she'll go for a week or so having accidents every day and we'll notice the drinking problem, and then we'll get her in at the vet and she'll stop and life will be normal again for a while.)

In early September when we had her in for this (just before it stopped) the tests they ran didn't show any immediate problems except that her kidneys weren't concentrating the urine like they should. Based on that and the only symptom she has (drinking and peeing) they had all but diagnosed diabetes insipidus and when it stopped, they supposed that it was brought on by the trauma of having company for so long, a reasonable thought since Meg has always been a nervous little puppy.

So, when it started back up last week, we gave it two days (just to make sure it wasn't a fluke since we also got home a little later than usual the first day) and then called the vet. Monday we took her in for a day of testing - chest x-rays and a Low Dose Dexamethasone Suppression test, since the test to positively confirm the diabetes insipidus is very dangerous and they wanted to rule out other things, like Cushings, first.

She came back positive for Cushings. And here is where I am thankful for blogging and the blog-friends I've made. Cause the first thing I thought when I hung up with the vet was, "I'll email Eric and see if he has any pointers from the beginning of their journey with Abbye." And I got a wonderful note back that was quite encouraging and I appreciate it immensely.

So the next step is to take her to the Internist for an abdominal ultrasound so they can, hopefully, determine if the Cushings is pituitary (meaning that the pituitary gland is sending too much of the hormone that triggers cortisone production) or adrenal (meaning that the adrenal glands are not paying attention to the pituitary and just generating cortisone all the live long day, whether she needs it or not.) Both are caused by tumors on the gland, but the vet says to cross our fingers for pituitary as the adrenal tumors can often be malignant (though she did also say they're very often operable if that's the case.)

Putting aside any malignancies, however, Cushings appears to be very (and fairly easily) treatable, and that is a relief, because for now the dogs really are our children and to think of them being sick breaks my heart. (And yes, I know that the Dog Whisper is rolling his eyes and saying I'm part of the world's problems right now - though Tim is very much the pack leader in our family and I'm ok with that - it means I get all the cuddles). But the fact of the matter is that I pushed (and oh yes, I pushed and nagged and pleaded and down-right begged) Tim into getting the girls when the reality of our infertility first hit me. They have filled a very huge hole in my heart, and even in Tim's (though he never knew it was there until it was filled), and I'm not ready to think about losing either one of them.