I picked up Brynn this morning at Washington State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine in Pullman and got back to the ranch late this afternoon with her. Alayne took these photos of Brynn unloading from the trailer and then showing off her latest hair-do. (She was clipped at the hospital for her ultrasound imaging.)
The news on Brynn is mixed. She definitely has a kidney infection, which we had started treating even before she left for WSU with an antibiotic called enrofloxacin (trade name is Baytril). But an echocardiogram at the hospital showed a possible infection in her heart, so she is now on a separate antibiotic for that, too.
Brynn did have another fever spike over the weekend but she quickly came back to normal. Why she spiked when she’s on the antibiotics we don’t know, but of course that is alarming. Hopefully it means she just needs longer treatment, and in fact she will stay on the Baytril for an entire month.
We knew she had a small hole in her heart, called a ventral septal defect, or VSD, from an echo- cardiogram we did when she was three weeks old. Sometimes VSDs from birth actually close up on their own as the heart grows along with the rest of the body; other times they stay the same size, and sometimes they get larger. Well, from the latest echocardiogram at WSU last week, we learned the hole in her heart has grown and is now categorized as ‘moderate to severe.’ The cardiologist also thinks Brynn may be experiencing the backflow of blood in different chambers and valves in her heart.
All that, combined with the possible infection — I say "possible" because it’s difficult to determine for certain, thus her official diagnosis lists this as "possible bacterial endocarditis" — means we need to be paying as much attention to her heart now as her kidneys. Brynn’s specialist asked us to bring her back in a month for another echocardiogram, which should indicate whether we successfully treated the suspected infection.
And speaking of kidneys, it turns out she’s down to only one kidney now, the left one. They could not find the right kidney on ultrasound, and during endoscopy last week the doctors could not detect any urine coming down the ureter from that right kidney. We knew from ultrasound when Brynn was a few weeks old that her right kidney didn’t appear normal. When she was at WSU back in February for surgery the surgeons could not get a good ultrasound image of it then, either. So we suspected it had shut down and/or shrunk in size. Brynn also has one or more stones in her left kidney. What’s more, the radiologist’s report said "the left kidney is severely enlarged for the age of the patient."
This means she is now officially in chronic renal failure, too.
We could get depressed by these findings, but Brynn remains her happy, loving self. And as long as she’s happy, we’re going to take our cues from her. When I went into her hospital stall this morning, she realized it was me and walked over to start running her lips over my beard. I mean, that’s just the way she is. Through all of this, she has never acted sick or looked puny. So as long as she’s not ready to give up, we aren’t, either.
(Click on photos for larger image.)
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