Less than two weeks later, on Sunday, September 4th, we noticed Bovver Boy limping on what seemed to be his front right leg. We took a close look at him and thought he must have just had a minor injury from playing all day in the yard with his brother Sampson. They like to play pretty rough and this was not an uncommon occurrence. Our good friend, Mary, was staying with us that weekend recovering from knee surgery and our sweet boy Bovver decided to keep her company in bed that night. When we woke up the next morning Bovver couldn't make the jump off of the bed. Mary had to help him down off of the bed and that's when we noticed he was losing mobility of his hind legs. He was only able to walk 4 or 5 feet without sitting down or collapsing to the ground. He continued to get worse over the course of the day. Mary thought he might be suffering from arthritis, so we gave him some Vetprofen that we had left over from April of this year when we had a Mast Cell Tumor and an abscessed tooth removed. It didn't do anything to improve his mobility and he never really seemed to be in any pain to begin with. Things continued to get worse. By that evening he was almost completely paralyzed. Since it was Labor Day, we were unable to take him to see his vet so we called first thing Tuesday morning and the vet told us to bring him in right away.
When we took him into the vet he was unable to move his legs at all. This made for some very interesting potty breaks and a lot of carrying around our 60 lb baby (still does). They ran lots of tests on our boy. They took blood samples, a sample from his enlarged lymph node, X rays of his chest, back and hips, and checked all of his reflexes. They told us they thought he was suffering from a neurological condition and referred us to the Animal Neurology and Imaging Center in Algadones, NM (the only animal neurologist in New Mexico).
We drove straight there with our boy in tow. They went over all of the tests that his vet ran and did some more of their own. They wanted to try to find out (or rule out) what could be going on. We decided to go ahead with the Tensilon test for Myasthenia Gravis, a disorder of signal transmission between the nerves and muscles. The test came back positive. We were so happy to finally know what was going on, but this meant that his immune system was lowered by something else, which caused the MG. Luckily, MG can be treated with medication. They decided to keep Bovver boy overnight to administer this new medication and monitor the side effects. The medication causes common side effects of "SLUD" Salivation, Lacrimation, Urination, Defecation, but an overdose can cause the heart rate to speed up to very high levels and cause really serious, irreversible damage. So, we kissed our baby goodbye, got his blanket from the car and promised to come visit him tomorrow.
We visited him the next day to have some dinner with him and see how he was doing on his new medication. He was able to hold himself up, but was still unable to walk. He hadn't eaten since Sunday night, so the vet brought in a tray full of different foods for him to try. He still wouldn't eat unless Eric put the food in his mouth first! But, he ate and we cuddled him and loved him and promised we would be back for him tomorrow. The next day we got a call that we could pick him up! He was still struggling, but he could walk again! We were so happy to have our baby home and he was beyond happy to sleep in his own bed with his mama, daddy and brother again.
If you'd like to see what Myasthenia Gravis looks like, check out Bovver's walk to freedom:
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