Thankful

We have had a rough week!  I have not posted in a while because life got very stressful. We have not been having much fun or enjoying this beautiful fall weather.  Last Monday Murray was acting really sick.  He was eating, drinking and going to the bathroom, but he was very lethargic and heavily panting.  We got him into the vet that night, but didn't have much success in figuring out what was wrong.  His temperature was normal, his heart sounded ok, and basically everything was checking out to be normal.  He tested positive for a small amount of worms, but that was relatively new because he was tested 3 weeks prior and was worm free!  My mind kept going back to his recent gulping episodes and in my heart I felt his discomfort was centered around his throat, and it will soon turn out that I was right.  It did feel like there was swelling in his throat, but after the vet checked, we weren't sure if it was actual swelling or his normal throat size/shape.  It didn't make a lot of sense that he would be eating normally if his throat was swollen.  It was decided he would be wormed and sent home on an antibiotic.  By Tuesday he was only marginally better.  I once again called my vet to figure out what our next steps should be if this did not start to improve.  We decided if there was not improvement by Wednesday, Murray would go to the vet again on Thursday for xrays, blood tests and a possible throat scope.  Wednesday was only a little better compared to Tuesday.  By this time I was getting extremely nervous.  I was now noticing Murray flinching as if I was going to hit him if I approached the left side of his head.  I noticed his bark sounded muffled and whenever he started to yawn, he immediately cut it off.  I had become more certain this issue was related to his head or throat somehow.  So, after a teary call to my vet, we set it up for Murray to spend the day there Thursday for the proper tests.  To sum up the findings...blood work was normal and xrays only showed one minor thing (minor compared to the kind of things running through my mind).  Everything appeared normal except there was a shadow of his epiglottis showing up on the xray.  Doc said he shouldn't really see the epiglottis, and the fact that he could, suggested it was infected or inflamed.  We assume it was somehow damaged in something he chewed or ate (a stick, a sharp edge on a treat), and then over time became severely irritated or infected due to food passing over it everyday.  This was GOOD NEWS!  We were sent home (earlier than expected because my good boy didn't even have to be sedated for his tests) with directions to finish our antibiotic, feed a soft food diet for a few days, and do a course or prednisone.  By Friday Murray was starting to act much more like himself.  Just today I heard the first normal sounding bark and it was music to my ears!  I'm not even going to complain that I am up every couple hours through the night because the predisone causes a lot of peeing.  I am so so happy my bouncy boy is back to himself.

PS...I am hoping the gulping over the past month was related to this issue and that will be resolved as well.  Fingers crossed.