I'm so sorry. Wish there was a nicer way to say it, but Glaucoma in dogs is terrible! And it takes a pocket full of money or good insurance to manage it.
I had a toy poodle that was diagnosed with it at around 12 years old. Before she was 14 she was completely blind and had one eyeball removed. You are right. If it is primary glaucoma, eventually both eyes are usually affected. My girl had sudden onset glaucoma in the first eye and it appeared literally almost overnight. We went to bed on a Sunday night with no apparent symptoms - at least nothing I noticed - and woke up Monday morning with a bulging eye with a blue cast to it. She was in so much pain that she wouldn't even let me touch her. Off to the vet we went, and they knew right away what it was. The pressure in her eye had already hit 80 and had already lost the vision. Vet got us an emergency appointment an hour later with an eye specialist, and I was shocked that the only treatment available for her (because the pressure was so high) was enucleation. Complete removal of the eye.
She had the surgery within 24 hours of being diagnosed. It was major surgery but the recovery wasn't as bad as I expected. She was on pain meds for about a week, wore a cone for two weeks and was pretty miserable for a few days, but she did perk up after a week or so. Once the hair grew back over the eye socket (couple of months) she looked pretty cute with one eye.
If your dog has secondary glaucoma (usually caused by an injury or other disease of the eye) she may not develop it in the second eye. Mine had primary glaucoma so we immediately started treating her remaining eye with drops even though the pressure was normal. We held off the glaucoma for about a year, but it was a tough year filled with worry, frequent visits to the eye specialist, drops twice daily, and the drops are expensive. Once the pressure started climbing in the second eye, it went pretty fast. Within about four months, we were using four different types of drops, each a few times per day, the timing of the drops had to be separated and all were expensive. It seemed like she was getting drops every couple of hours. The drops worked for a while but eventually we couldn't control the pressure and by the time the pressure was intermittently at around 50, she lost vision in the second eye.
We opted for the gentamycin treatment for the second eye. It was a lot less invasive procedure, done in the office with no anesthesia, and she came home completely blind 20 minutes later. Not a very technical explanation, but they used a needle to remove the contents of the eye, injected gentamycin to kill all the cells in the eye, and then filled it with some kind of gel. No complications, no recovery time. She literally walked out of the doctor's office 20 minutes later.
If your dog has primary glaucoma, she will most likely eventually become blind. I would suggest going onto yahoo and joining the blind dog's list now while she still has vision. They are a very supportive group and will walk you through this and help you teach your dog to be blind before she's blind. Its amazing what they can learn! In the year and a half before my dog lost all her vision, she learned so many vocal cues that you'd never know she was blind. She could walk on a leash with no problem and knew cues for everything. We also did a lot of nose work with her, and she could search out a treat in no time, no matter where I hid it, had no problem finding her food and water bowls and got around like a champ. Let me know if you need help finding the yahoo list. It is a great resource.
My poodle lived another three years after losing her vision. She was 17 when we lost her. She was fine, and I don't regret any of it. The bright side to getting it over with and having the eyes removed is no more worry, no more drops, no more pain and no more glaucoma.
I'm sorry you have to deal with this. It is a lot to digest and unfortunately with glaucoma there isn't much time to adjust. I wish there was a way to be more positive about glaucoma but in a word - it sucks! But, you and your dog can do this together! Hope this helped a little.
Diana |