April 6th 2005 3:19 pm
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We came home to a very scary situation last week, on the evening of March 30th.

Apple was just fine and normal at 7:30pm, but when we came home from a concert at 12:30am, we found her collapsed, completely out of it, not able to stand or walk, and with a very high fever.

We took her to the local emergency animal hospital and had to hospitalize her overnight and into the next day. After several different tests, X-rays, etc., it was diagnosed that she'd had cluster seizures which left her dazed and caused her temperature to spike to 106.5 degrees.

She is slowly recovering, but her back legs have not been working right and she is falling down all the time now. We're pretty much either seeing or talking to our vet everyday now--she's on Phenobarbital for seizure control, but her back legs not working right is a mystery. The vet thinks she may have started at too high a dose so we're backing down a bit to see if she improves in the next few days.

It is just heartbreaking to see her starting to accept and remember that her back legs aren't cooperating--she has stopped trying to follow me everywhere I go in the house and just lays on her bed and cries while Bean and Dorian wrestle and play in the living room in front of her. Normally she'd be joining in the hoopla and fun.

If the dosage doesn't seem to be the cause, we'll be seeing a neurologist and getting an MRI...and then from there, we hope to get some answers and see what else we can do to help her.