Posted: Fri Jan 23, 2009 5:04 pm Post subject: Epilepsy... Sherpa's Journey
I was Chatting to John the other day about our lovely labs and as we do from time to time started discussing Epilepsy... Since then I have been mulling over wether to post this as a snippet of Life with an Epileptic Labrador.... I guess my wish would be that it helps anyone else who finds themselves loving a Labrador with epilepsy....
Sherpa first showed signs of Epilepsy a month before his 3rd birthday.. It was out of blue and terrifying to watch.... This first trip to the vet involved bloods to check for a biochemical cause for the fit and to check for a neurological cause i.e tmour or infection etc...
Everything came back as normal... The advice was to wait and see...
Six months went by and another fit happened ....
Epilepsy was discussed..... Medication was not advised as the rule of thumb is to only use medication if the seizures are 1 or more a month...
Sherpa went on to fit at 3/6 monthy cycles .. So life carried on as normal for 4 years albiet the fits occuring at these times...
Then out of the blue Sherpa began to fit weekly ... why appeared to be a mystery at the time .... The vet had to persuade me to put him on medication i was reluctant to go down this road at the time as by then i'd researched canine Epilepsy and had my worries about long term med use.
But after a particularly bad fit I relented for Sherpa's sake...
In hindsight now ( As it was at this point i had found LF and John ) I have learnt that what may have precipitated the change in Sherpa's fits to weekly could have had something to do with the fact that at the time I was working very part-time as a practice Nurse .. But during this particular month that Sherpa started to fit weekly ...I was covering extra hours for a colleague .... Dogs with Epilepsy as we know react to stress by fitting.... ( I did not know this at the time ...... Had I thought of this back then I think i would have said no to the extra sessions i was doing and would have waited to see if the fits went back to thier less frequent cycle... Before considering meds...
But that wasn't to be the way of things and so Sherpa now takes his medication with good effect i must add....
Now Life is a series of regular blood tests to check his levels.... Which in Sherpa's case do fluctuate on a regular basis .. Sometimes the levels go too high and he has Head tremors which seem to occur when his bromide levels shoot up.... Then we reduce the dose.... and within a few months the levels drop too low again and he has a fit .... And so we begin again !!
He always has what I call his Christmas fit .... This i am sure is due to happy stress ...The decorations are up his christmas stocking is up and presents appear under the tree.. He gets excited and happy and bing we have a fit
So Stress can be a happy occurence as well as not ....
I can't help but wonder from time to time had i known then what i now know... Would Sherpa have needed medication or could i have lived with his fits bieng few and far between sometimes severe other times less so?
Please don't think I'm suggesting not to give medication because i'm not at all .....
Sherpa has been having medication now since 2005 and he does very well on them
Obviously there is a lot to his journey that would fill a book so there are many blanks in this post and many questions that are not covered....
But as I say... I hope that should anyone who like me a few years back are feeling isolated and afraid for their Dog.... That this short insight based on my personal journey of living with an Epileptic Lab helps relieve some of that anxiety and if it rings bells that say yes i can relate to that then this will have been worth putting down in this post
I have to just add .... If it hadn't been for John here on LF i would by now have been carted off to a nice cosy padded cell .... Joking aside He has been a Godsend to those of us with Epileptic labs here on LF
Trizia and Sherpa x
PS: Sherpa is 10 years old now and living life to the full as a mischievous hooligan Lab who refuses to grow old gracefully
It's all new for us as you know, but I'm learning lots. It's a shame we have had to start Tombi on the meds straightaway, but she had 5 fits over 2 days and there didn't seem any alternative. We're seeing the vet next week for her blood tests and want to discuss how to proceed from here. I'd rather she wasn't on meds too, but we'll do what we need to. She's been great for the last 2 weeks though. No fits and I think 100% back to her normal self.
I agree that John has also been a great help to me, along with others on here with experience of epileptic dogs like you, Sheila, June, Jayne and Fay, and a number of others. It really made me realise that it wasn't the end of the world and Tombi could still have a normal happy lab life. Thanks to you guys I am much more aware of possible triggers for fits and feel much more able to cope.
____________ Natalie x
LAB LINK RESCUE Co ordinator and Forum Administrator for my sins
Jack, Molly & Maia, watched over by Tara Banana from the Bridge
Even though I've learnt to accept it and BJ has been living with epilepsy since he was 3.5 - he's now almost 8 - I still take comfort from posts like this Trizia.
I'd also like to add, I'd be alongside you in the padded cell without all the incredible help and support from JohnW ... and you and Sherps. Hugs to you both and forever thanks.
hope you would of found room in the padded cell for one more and with eternal gratitude to John for also keep me out of it
Excellent post Trizia, Zaks journey with epilepsy is fairly new compared with yours, he has suffered from it since he was 12 months old and during that first twelve months we saw him go from occasional one off fits to weekly cluster fits, very distressing for him and for us, every step of the way i have fought tooth and nail to keep his medication to a minimum, trying alternative remedies and even changing his diet, alas it was all to no avail, and after a nightmare couple of days which saw him having 5 cluster fits one after the other we finally relented and included potassium bromide into the equation, yes we worry about the long term effect this will have on him, but I have to say, all things considered his current enjoyment of life, the reduction in the frequency of fits and the more relaxed mannor it has allowed us to finally achieve, far outways the possible side effects at this time, and whatever lies in the future for zak, well, we will face that when it comes.
I too started to write a journal of zaks epilepsy when it first started just over a yr ago, it is now some 30 odd pages long of all sorts of information in and around his fits, so yes trizia we could write a book as zak is only 2 yet so goodness knows how long it will be in a few more years,
Thanks to John who is my saviour, and thanks to you all on here trizia, fay, mambosmum, and mambosister for just being there, and to everyone else who listens to us and offers support when we are rabbiting on about our gorgeous doggies,
Over the past few months I have come to realise how lucky Sherpa has been in relation to his Epilepsy.......
So many of you here didn't have the chance to come to terms with knowing your lovely Lab had Epilepsy before facing the descision to start medication
You have needed to deal with it all so quickly .... I know what a rollercoaster ride we were on but we had 4 years of long periods of Sherpa bieng fit free to begin with... Tombi BJ Zak, Mambo to name but a few didn't have that .... If this helps just one other person going through this then sharing this has been worth it..
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) I have learnt that what may have precipitated the change in Sherpa's fits to weekly could have had something to do with the fact that at the time I was working very part-time as a practice Nurse .. But during this particular month that Sherpa started to fit weekly ...I was covering extra hours for a colleague .... Dogs with Epilepsy as we know react to stress by fitting.... ( I did not know this at the time 
...... Had I thought of this back then I think i would have said no to the extra sessions i was doing and would have waited to see if the fits went back to thier less frequent cycle... Before considering meds...
.... And so we begin again !!
.... This i am sure is due to happy stress ...The decorations are up his christmas stocking is up and presents appear under the tree.. He gets excited and happy and bing we have a fit 
.... Joking aside He has been a Godsend to those of us with Epileptic labs here on LF 
Hugs to you both and forever thanks. 
