Maddie had a grand mal seizure tonight
Scariest 2 minutes ever. I was out on the deck, relaxing after getting back yesterday from vacation, when I heard my husband yelling that Maddie was choking. Actually, she was having a very dramatic grand mal seizure. Thankfully I recognized it and from some dim corner of my frantic brain I remembered that we should let her alone til she came out of it.
Jack was barking frantically so I crated him til she was done. She probably seized about 30 seconds or so, then spent another minute trying to drag herself to her feet, and then another minute or two bumping into things and nudging our legs. She then shook herself off and went and got a drink and spent another 45 minutes pacing and panting a bit more than usual (though she came for cuddles and played a bit and had another drink in there; and the fact that there was a huge fireworks display nearby probably didn't help). She seems ok now.
I called the emergency vet and they said we could bring her in for 24 hour observation, or keep her here but bring her in if she seizes again. They said either would be fine. Since the observation would be in a vet cage (I asked), I made the decision to keep her home, but I am not 100% comfortable with that decision. We have work tomorrow and we can come home a couple times and my mom will stop over once or twice, but she will be alone for chunks of the day. We will baby gate her away from Jack just in case.
She is 8 years old which seems too old for epilepsy. I looked online and the causes of seizures are widely varied. I don't think she could have gotten into poison (plus I think there would be other symptoms). She ate fine, hasn't been ill in other ways, and has been bright and alert since we picked her up last night from the boarding kennel.
Any insights would be greatly appreciated. :-( I am worried and a bit sad.
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08/12/13 update: Maddie seems to be her normal self today. Our regular vet was able to see us today. She did a bunch of posturing tests to check that all her neurological functions were normal. Also checked that her eyes had a normal response to light and that she had a normal flinch reflex. Her temp and vitals were ok.
They drew a bunch of tubes of blood to check liver, kidney, thyroid, and who knows what else. She says the test is mailed out and they should have the results within a day or so. IF the tests are all ok, then we just watch and wait. She says they don't usually medicate unless the seizures are more frequent than about one a month, or last ten minutes or so (the seizing, not the recovery which can be an hour or more).
Epilepsy this late in life is rare but not impossible. She says it's also possible she's had seizures before that were either very mild and went unnoticed, or happened when we were not home. I had already thought of that.
They don't suggest brain scans unless things get much worse; she said brain tumors are not all that common (and I get the idea the test is expensive). Since our neighbor recently lost their golden to a brain tumor that caused seizures, this is one of my biggest fears. However, the golden's tumor metastasized from a mammary tumor.
She also said it's ok to leave the dogs loose together when we are not home, since Jack is unlikely to attack her; he wants us to fix things when she acts weird.
I e-mailed her breeder last night, who got right back to me early this morning. She confirmed she is not aware of any of her dogs or pups she's sold having seizure issues. She has Maddie's litter brother at her house and he's fine. So I doubt it's something genetic.
I will update when we hear about the blood work. Thanks for all your concern.
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Update 2 08/13/13:
All Maddie's blood work came back normal--- thyroid, sugar, ammonia, kidney, liver, red and white counts. So all we can do is just wait and see if anything else happens. I am keeping notes of the seizure and if there are any more (and I hope there aren't) I will document them as well.
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Updated 9/14/13
Maddie had another seizure last night. Funny thing is, it was almost the exact time of day as the first one. No triggers I can possibly think of; she had a perfectly typical day.
We knew what to expect so it was not so scary for us, but it seems to greatly alarm the other animals in the house. I put in a call to the vet this morning. She was not in, and will get back to me on Monday. Last time, she said they usually don't medicate unless the seizures are more frequent than about once a month or so. This one was two days shy of five weeks from the last one.
It made me a bit sad, since I was really hoping the first one was just a fluke. The poor thing somehow backed herself behind a sofa (the sofa is diagonally across the corner of the room, so there is a fair amount of space back there). When she came too, she could not seem to see for a few minutes (this happened last time too), but instead of panicking and walking into walls, she wagged her back end like crazy and kept climbing up to get close to our faces, her nose going the whole time. It seemed to give her such joy to be by our faces that we got right down on the floor with her, but this made Jack bark and bark since it was such strange behavior for us. Poor girl.
The cat was very frightened and ran upstairs. Then she sat on the steps for some time and hissed whenever a dog came near. In the past few weeks, she has hissed a lot more than normal at the dogs; I think the seizures make her think the dogs are unpredictable and violent.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Beth on
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Thanks LInda. It just breaks my heart to see how confused and disoriented she is after. She doesn't seem sore, though; I read online that may people are very sore after seizures because of the contractions, but she does not seem to avoid jumping or running after.
And then, to make things worse, the poor thing fell down the steps at 4am. I don't think it was seizure related; she woke me with her clickity-clickity up the steps (and she frequently comes up at that time for some reason). Then I heard a very short pause and the sound of her thumping back down. I think she's either having trouble seeing in the dark (she's almost 9), or the cat was at the top of the steps and Maddie tried to turn around and go back down to avoid her.
I went down right away and she did not have any post-seizure symptoms. She was panting a tiny bit, but she pants like crazy after a seizure, and she was not disoriented. Plus Jack didn't bark, and he barks a lot when she seizes. However, I noticed that for some time after the seizure, one leg or other would not land right and she'd stumble a bit, so perhaps it was still the post-seizure period that caused her tumble. I felt just awful.
Seems like it might be time for a gate at the bottom of the steps. But it will have to be a free-standing one; there's no way to use a pressure-mounted one with the open railing on one side.
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Permalink Reply by Jane Christensen on
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I had Wynn fall (roll) down a flight of steps at work in the dark...that was scary and I knew they were there but never thought of Wynn till I heard him roll. I was sure he would be hurt(he's 8) but he wasn't...thank-goodness.
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Permalink Reply by Chris Payerl on
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I'd suggest that you follow Maddie's lead after she has a S---- if she feels like going someplace, then go, but don't overdo it. If she feels like taking it easy, then skip an outing that day. Sometimes being out in the fresh air seems to perk her up --- if it's not too hot. Good luck!
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Thank you, I will. She was pretty cheerful this morning. Maybe a little quieter and clingier than usual. She is quite fit, though, so a short-ish hike isn't too physically taxing for her. They both love going new places and it was quite cool today. It seemed to cheer her up and now she's sleeping soundly.
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Oh Beth, I am so sorry. I'm glad that Maddie was so happy to see you after her seizure and I can just picture Jack barking like "what are you doing". It does sometimes take a bit for eyes to focus again and sometimes they can even be confused while sometimes people at least just do whatever they were doing and don't even know they had a seizure.. Poor kitty...she is almost blind? probably really scared not being able to see well and have all the commotion. I guess 5 weeks is better than closer...I'm at a loss for words which doesn't happen often.
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Kitty is hearing impaired. She is a bit of a control freak, in the way of some very confident cats, and I think the unpredictableness of it upsets her.
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Permalink Reply by Linda on
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I know, it just makes you feel awful inside because you can't explain it to them. Good luck with the gate. Max isn't suppose to do a lot of stairs...hubby built him a ramp to go outside. The big problem was that he always slept upstairs with us...in the winter he wants on the bed, needs help with that. After him managing to knock over every gate or get thru every blockcade I rigged I gave up and let him come upstairs at night. It was just plain less stressful for both him and me.
Can you convince her to come up when you go up? That way you could monitor her. Or leave a low light on downstairs (we do) so that she could see better? As for the cat....Oliver likes to go racing past Max when he's half way up and it scares the crap out of him.
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Linda, the dogs don't go in our bedroom. We have an upstairs hallway, and our bedroom and one of the others are gated off to keep the dogs (well, mostly Maddie; Jack doesn't try to bother it) away from the cats food and litter box.
The dogs sleep on the sofas and Maddie comes up around the time we get up in the morning to make sure my husband remembers to come down and feed them. Because, you know, if she didn't do that, he'd forget. ;-)A nightlight would probably help, but honestly if she is going to have seizures on occasion I really need a way to keep her from trying to run upstairs in her post-seizure state if something happens while we are not here; for some reason both dogs head upstairs if they get very upset.
Mine do respect gates, so I might try a short free-standing one that the cat could jump over but the dogs can't.
Kitty can be a bully about the stairs; she likes to control them.
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Jane...it is scary when they fall down stairs. Max has slid part way down ours more than once but has managed to stop himself. The worst was when Duffy (Irish wolfhound) went down the whole flight. He wasn't quite a year old so he was all legs. That was the first of the 2 head traumas he had...there is a closet with a wood door and full lenght mirrow at the bottom of the stairs and he went right into that. It was the head traumas that caused his seizures. The 2nd one he slid on the kitchen floor....chasing a cat?....and put his head clean thru the end of the kitchen island.
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Oh my Linda,
Did he break the mirror?
I guess I was lucky just having Wynn fall once but poor Duffy:( So you're not sure if he was chasing a cat?
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Jane..thankfully he didn't break the mirror. As for the kitchen episode...I have no idea what he was doing. I came home from work and the kitchen was totally rearranged. The table was pushed up against the pantry door, the chairs were knocked over, the water bowl was overturned and a huge hole in the end of the island. I thought someone had tried to break into the house. I called the police and they sent a K-9 unit. The cop was so nice...he looked all around and when he closely checked the hole in the island he found hair/fur that matched Duffy's fur...he was a red brindle. I had thought about a break in because less then a week before I caught 2 kids (10-12) trying to break in to my friend's house across the street. They had just had a fire in there and I caught the boys coming out of the house with some of her jewelry in their hands. I managed to get hold of one kid and screamed for my husband who came out and we called the police. The couple who owned the house was at our house when it happened. The police came and handled the situation. My first thought it was them paying me back. Nothing else in my house was touched other than the mess in the kitchen so it was concluded from the fur in the hole that the dog had slid into it chasing something.
Funny footnote to that story...as I said, it was a K-9 unit that responded. The cop had left the dog (GSD) in the car. I walked out with him apologizing for taking up his time. He got in the car and turned around and gave that police dog a good piece of his mind. The dog had gone from the back seat into the front and had eaten the cop's lunch. We both had a good laugh...guess even police dogs can't resist stealing food.
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Too funny Linda...my dogs do the same thing even if it's a wrapper that they shred.
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