Practice News
 Braveheart AwardFriday 18th January, 2008
JAYCEE SHIRES
The Braveheart award this month goes to a special dog who has been a regular visitor to our surgery since being diagnosed with epilepsy in February 2005.
One morning his owner came down to find him having a seizure. They called our out of hours emergency service in a panic and Jaycee was brought down to the surgery for treatment and investigation as to why he was fitting. After being referred to a specialist veterinary hospital for an MRI scan, he was diagnosed with epilepsy.
Finding out your dog has epilepsy can certainly be frightening and upsetting – for the rest of its life an epileptic animal like Jaycee will need to be given tablets on a daily basis, sometimes more than once a day, and will need regular blood tests and check ups. It is an illness that can bring about much uncertainty as seizures can occur at any time or place. Despite this, Jaycee’s owners took this all in their stride and got on with it.
They soon became experts and could tell when Jaycee was about to have a seizure. It was when a receptionist came through to the hospital and told us he was on his way down that we all jumped into action – preparing
intravenous catheters, anti-seizure drugs, padded kennel, oxygen, etc.
At first Jaycee would rarely have seizures but unfortunately they became more and more frequent and Jaycee soon became a regular visitor. As his epilepsy progressed the seizures became more frequent and lasted for a longer period of time. He started having ‘clusters’ which meant he would have many seizures over a 24 hour period. Soon Jaycee was spending up to a week at a time with us.
Unfortunately for Jaycee and his owners, the epilepsy got to a stage where he was spending more time in the hospital that he was at home. His seizures became so frequent that in order to stop them, he was constantly under sedation. It was at this point that a decision was made between his owners and Andy (our Head Vet) that it was time to put him to sleep. This was obviously an extremely hard decision for everyone involved but it was the right decision to prevent Jaycee suffering.
He will be sadly missed by all the staff at the hospital, his owners and of course his brother and best friend Joshua.
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jaycee shires braveheart.JPG
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