I called MVS in Southfield Tuesday after I posted. Talked to a girl in the neurology dept there and explained what had happened to that point. She suggested taht we not even go to the 4:30 appt., and instead head over there immediately. Due to the fact that she hadn't walked/had any use of her back legs for 5 days and meds were not showing any signs of working. So we took off work at Noon and came home and got her, stopped at our vet's and got her history, and headed toward Detroit. Got there around 5 and they wheeled her in on a gurney. After a short time a doctor came in and told us they did not think the prognosis was very good. She showed no signs of deep pain or reflexes in her hind legs at all. Could be a couple different things, which they could pinpoint more if we were to proceed with testing/diagnostics, and then surgery if we wanted. So we approved the diagnostics, schedule for the next day, Wednesday (yesterday). They called us at the hotel around 10:30 yesterday to let us know they were going to start the tests in about an hour, and that her condition seemed to have progressed a bit overnight. She had a slight fever, and her front legs now seemed to be a bit rigid. So we packed up and went to the vet. hospital to wait it out. They came out around 2:30 and took us into a room. They did multiple x-rays, as well as a myelogram and CT scans of her back. The problem was NOT in her cervical vertebra at all, as our vet had told us - it was in her thoractic vertebra lower down. They would not know 100% for sure unless they actually did surgery and cut her, but there were a few different options that they felt were the cause. They could see a large lesion area on her back vertebra that covered 3-4 disks. Their best assumption was that it was myelomalacia - death of spinal cord tissue.
And when that happens, it can continue to get worse and die off, and eventually spread up the spinal cord and eventually affect her front legs and eventually cause death by respiratory failure. Another possible cause was FCE - Fibrocartilaginous Embolism - basically a stroke of the spinal cord. Another option with a bad outcome. Or it could even be something like a tumor that was putting pressure on the cord and irreversibly damaged it. None of the options were good at all. Due to the amount of time that had passed, and the fact taht she had no deep pain perception anymore, they held out very little hope that she would recover, and that it would actually get worse. We had talked about it the night before, and decided that if the prognosis was good, even if she didn't recover her hind legs, that we could do what we had to, by getting a K9 Cart, manually expressing her bladder, etc., to keep her with us. But the doctors did not think surgery would accomplish anything in the end and the tissue would continue to die off. So after a gut-wrenching meeting with the docs we decided to have her put to sleep. She was already under general anesthesia for the tests they had done; it was just a matter of giving her the injection to stop her heart. So we went in to the ICU where they had her on a gurney with a warming blanket on her, and stayed with her and talked to her and petted her, telling her what a GOOD GIRL she was, and after about 30 minutes or so we were finally ready and they gave her the final injection. We stayed with her a bit longer afterwards - I just didn't want to leave her. I knew it'd be the last time I'd be able to pet her soft fur. Let me tell you - that was a loooong ride home from Detroit last night. They are going to cremate her and send us her cremains, as well as a cast pawprint they took of her paw. Our house feels so empty now...everywhere I look I imagine her there. She's a PART of this house. She was only 10 and had no other health problems. She was our baby - we don't have kids, so she essentially WAS our kid. She had so much personality for a dog - I swear she thought of herself as a person. If you'd like to see an online album that I started earlier this year of her, see it at Sony Imagestation site (registration is free). I had planned on adding to it once I got a chance to scan in all the hard photographs I have of her - I still plan to do that now:http://www.imagestation.com/album/pictures.html?id=2124829535