My post was made with the best of intentions and directed at the previous poster who suggested giving one vet several attempts at a diagnosis.
This turned out badly for us.
Once we found a vet with the right experience in Duke's condition diagnosis was immediate and with the right meds he probably lived a bit longer and a bit more comfortable.
My post was made during a long bad night for Duke. Watching him suffer just trying to breath. Yaking cough. Knowing he's only a few days away from passing.
You are reading my own personal regret as a criticism of you which it was most certainly not. If I had sought more medical opinions sooner I can't help but think that Duke might have lived longer.
But as to your kind suggestion that I keep my opinions to myself .... uh.... this is a public forum. But thanks for your kind support and understanding as we suffer Duke's last days. Clearly your loss did not make you sensitive to the loss suffered by others.
And again to any who read this thread in the future.
Collapsing trachea is a terrible illness but it turns out that there is another cause of those same symptoms. We spent way too much time focused on the trachea when it was Duke's heart condition causing the problem.
It was only when the heart murmer grew loud enough that our new vet suggested an xray. That xray revealed the murmer to be more than a murmer. It was now advanced heart disease and a very enlarged heart.
This was causing the yaking and trachea collapsing. This is what is now killing Duke.
When I did web research on the yaking and the trachea I found absolutely no reference to any possibility of it being heart related. This cost us valuable time and it turns out not to be uncommon.
Thus I am posting of Duke's illness in various web forums so that someday some other yorkie owner who is sitting at his/her computer trying to find out what is wrong with their very special pet (which as all yorkie owners know - yorkies are VERY special little beings) - might end up learning about this other cause of the yaking and insist on their vet checking out the heart.
I certainly wish I would have found a reference like this in the thousands of web pages I searched. If I had - I might not be watching my dog die right now. He'd be playing ball instead.
But as is all too common on web forums - posts can easily be read out of context. Someone can be in tears while posting deeply from the heart and that same post can be read by a forum member as cold and insulting. Great writers spend a lifetime perfecting the art of communicating emotion through words. I most certainly am not even a decent writer so clearly my posts are probably failing to convey the intent with which they were written. I simply hope that someday my post show's up in a suffering yorkie owners google search and that it might make a difference in that special little dogs diagnosis. |