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Update

Dooley has been doing surprisingly well dealing with the ME over the last month or so. We are finally getting her warmed up to her Bailey Chair. The only problem is the walls of the chair do not go up high enough so she can spring up and over the sides and climb out. I have to get her in the chair and then wedge towels around her to keep her still. She can still somehow manage to get out. For now, we are alternating between holding her upright ourselves and seeing if she will stay in the chair. It has certainly saved me some time the few times that she has stayed in it for the full 20 minutes. Another thing we are still mastering is what food she will eat. We have moved from liking dry food mixed with wet food and water+thick-it to only liking the wet food with water+thick-it. This is fine, but expensive. Also, she has had consistent soft stools for the past few weeks. We have narrowed it down to being caused by the Thick-It because it happened with her regular dry food, the Blue Buf...

Blood Work Results

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Today we finally  got a call from our vet with Dooley's blood work results from 11/22/17. The blood work that was taken was a normal wellness blood panel (CBC, kidneys, liver, thyroid, etc.) and then a test for Myasthenia Gravis. Lucky for us, all tests came back normal. Part of me was wondering if it would almost be better if they detected a cause for the ME so we could treat the cause and hopefully the ME would go away... But now that I have discussed everything with my vet I realize that would just mean a litany of other problems on top of the ME... So in the long run, this is GREAT NEWS! We have played with a few different ways of eating and all have gone pretty well. The only thing that Dooley will NOT eat are the Knox Blocks. I tried dicing them up very small and mixing them in her food but she finds them and spits them out! I was worried about her not getting enough water. Water is what sends her into a big time episode (never food... hmmm). Anyway, I switched back from...

Dooley's Diagnosis

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This is Dooley. Dooley is a 5 year-old beagle mix and was diagnosed with Megaesophagus last week.   The Megaesophagus was identified using a Barium study with X-Rays. Her vet also sent off a full panel blood test as well as a test for Myasthenia Gravis to try to identify an underlying cause of this development. Dooley's symptoms started about 4 months ago when I noticed she couldn't keep water down after a long hike. We came back and she was pretty wiped out and wanted to drink a lot of water. I was really worried because I knew she needed some hydration after going for a summer hike. Eventually she was able to keep some down and we moved on. A few weeks later she started regurgitating her water almost every time she drank. She would hack and cough until a little came up and then she was fine. There were never any other symptoms and she never seemed to feel bad otherwise. I took her to the vet and we tried her on some Pepcid and Metoclopramide for a week or so to see if she...