Objectively, considering the hand she's been dealt, it is nothing short of a miracle that she's been with us as long as she has, with the quality of life she got to enjoy.
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| Jasmine and her best buddy. It was a love at first sight. |
We always pulled out all the stops and used everything that's been available to help her body deal with all the challenges it's faced.
Which treatments did she benefit from the most?
Of course, there were a number of surgeries. All very important, some of them life-saving. A surgery is an invasive but effective, and sometimes the only way, of dealing with some health problems. The decision to subject your dog to surgery cannot be made lightly, but one shouldn't refuse a surgery just because it is a surgery.
It is important to evaluate the situation, the options and predicted outcomes, and if surgery has the most benefit to offer, then it is the thing to do.
Then there are drugs. A drug treatment is sometimes the only option. Drugs, however, are a sharp, double-edged sword.
My granny used to say that once you start going to doctors, it is the beginning of your end. What she really meant by that was that once you start taking drugs, more drugs are needed to deal with the mess the first ones made, then more drugs to take care of the fallout of those .... and so on. She was a good example too. Eventually, she was taking so many different medications that he body was unable to deal with all that and the only treatment was taking her off all drugs.
For Jasmine, drugs were generally bad news.
When she was put on NSAIDs, it almost killed her. When she was given a buprenorphine injection, it almost killed her. In her last months, it appears that morphine, which was supposed to be her friend, turned on her too, and somehow played a significant role in the final crisis.
Steroids? Well, I was avoiding steroids for Jasmine for 9.5 years. Perhaps deep down I always knew they were going to be a bad news for her. With her neck events, though, she needed an immediate and aggressive treatment, and that meant prednisone. And it was a good decision under the circumstances. But I do believe that the steroids did contribute to the way things played out at the end as well.
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| Getting used to life jackets. We're going boating! How do I look in red? |
Antibiotics, such as metronidazole and amoxil, were good friends to Jasmine. We always used them discriminately, only when it was really necessary, and I don't believe that Jasmine's resistant infection was something that we brewed. The strain was resistant to antibiotics Jasmine never came anywhere near of. As it seems, she already caught it as it were.
We never refused pain management for her, but I have to say that we never observed a significant benefit of the pain drugs, with perhaps the exception of codeine.
The treatments Jasmine benefited from the most are those often considered non-conventional or alternative.
Stem cell treatments did her a world of good.
We were very happy that we decided to go down that path. We really wanted to do IV stem cells for her neck problems as well. Unfortunately, between waiting for her to be off steroids long enough, and following active infection, we were unable to include this any more.
We believe that stem cells, acupuncture, physical therapy, hydrotherapy, chiropractic and laser therapy, along with nutritional support, were the things that took Jasmine as far as she made it.
These were the tools we never hesitated using and never regretted doing so.
Given a choice, these were and always will be the treatments at the top of our list.
***
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