From:
Pam Sessoms
Date: 2002-03-22 11:31:00 UTC
Subject: Nana update - sneezing
Hey all,
A couple of weeks ago I posted about Nana, who had a "routine" (HA!)
unilateral left adrenal surgery and crashed overnight, looking Addisonian
and turning red/purple all over. I'm really going to try to keep this
brief so that I can get to the actual question.
Nana did stabilize, thanks to heroic efforts by my marvelous vet. She
initially was on dexamethasone shots, and we tried to wean her onto pred,
but then she started turning red/purple again, so back to the dex. It
helped the color change, but she became quite immonosuppressed and started
getting localized infections in her incision and IV catheter sites.
Where the color change/rash was the worst, her skin eventually dried up
and peeled off; looks totally normal now. Baytril and Clavamox got the
infections under control. Managed to get her onto pred instead of dex.
She had some fluid in her lungs, and we briefly thought she had heart
problems, but an echocardiogram ruled that out and also confirmed that her
abdomen was *not* going septic and the infections were just localized.
Fluid was probably from pneumonia. All of that is better now. She's
nearly off of pred, even, given that her remaining right adrenal seems to
be kicking in.
SO. The remaining "issue" is horrible, violent sneezing fits. They
started a little bit after the pneumonia/fluid and have only gotten worse.
My vet put an endoscope up her nose on Wednesday and found lots of dark
brown scabbing in the left nostril. The right side looks clear. She was
able to tease a lot of the scabbing from the left side out, with one chunk
just under one centimeter square in size. That's a big thing to be up a
weasel nose. Even under anesthesia for the procedure, Nana sneezed her
head off, making this challenging to say the least. After that, Nana was
sneeze-free for over 12 hours but has since started back up again.
Nose-junk was looked at under a microscope, and no bacteria or yeast were
seen, but some white cells were. She is still on Clavamox. The sneezing
was at an all-time high last night, with at least one violent attack of
over 50 hard sneezes every hour or two. Poor Nana. Only clear fluid is
sneezed out, near as I can tell. She breathes through her mouth quite a
bit to bypass her nose.
She is in a room with a warm steam humidifier, and I am putting
moisturizing saline nose drops in her nose every few hours, to try to keep
things soft so she can maybe sneeze the stuff out. The sneezing is much
worse when she tries to eat kibble - any touching of her nose causes a
fit, and so grabbing kibble tends to touch one off. I am handfeeding her
Bob's chicken gravy, which is easier, but she tends to be a pig and wants
to eat kibble anyway, even very soon after a handfeeding. She's already
very fat. Benadryl, Afrin, Otrivin, etc, do not help at all. She tries
to be active and has an appetite but is very frustrated by the sneezing.
Whines in frustration when she can't stop.
Anyone seen a similar case or have ideas?
Many thanks!
-Pam S.