Not 10 minutes into my new job at Westgate Animal Clinic (a couple of weeks in), Periwinkle Pug developed a red and squinty eye.
I requested permission and gathered all the eye stuff from work and did a work up at home with Blue. We had to look up how to use the newest tonometer - I had not yet used it! Periwinkle had glaucoma and uveitis of her left eye.
She already had keratoconjuntivitis sicca (dry eye) bilaterally, and had recently developed retinal degeneration that had left her nearly blind. She will almost certainly be completely non-visual eventually.
All that to say, if this eye was already trouble, and now being mean, if it did not shape up, it would have to go.
I returned to work and stared at the not yet familiar options in the pharmacy. Everything she needed was there. Dr. Petersen helped gather meds. And offered surgery if needed.
We started her on eye drops and pain medications.
Her eye pressure normalized by the next day. Her eye remained terribly painful.
Normally Periwinkle is the goofiest thing you could ever meet. She has a unique bark she only uses when Russ is making popcorn too slowly. I swear she laughs when she thinks she’s done something cute.
She stomps her paws and headbutts doors if she thinks she is being left out of something fun on the other side. She grumbles if we try to help her onto the bed that Russ made very very low for Joy’s sake. We left it low for Periwinkle. She always needs a butt boost and always swears at us when she gets one.
The roughest part of this whole ordeal was seeing our clown of a dog reduced to a scared, shaking little thing, frozen in place. I was more heartbroken about that than the thought of her losing an eye.
Dr. Petersen rearranged the entire schedule and had her issue solved very quickly. (That is all the details you or I need about that!)
Half the team sat with her durning recovery petting her and giving her oxygen while the other half the team ran interference to protect me from a surgery I very much should be comfortable with and very much am not, especially when it involves my own little Pug.
When I did come see her, she looked like she had just won a bar fight - a little rough with a bit of a shiner, but smug and content. The pain was already resolved.
The bruising and swelling were resolved in a day, and any post-op pain was completely covered by one of the most amazing medications I have ever known. (Just because carprofen is old and common as dirt does not mean it is not amazing.)
Periwinkle is snoring constantly beside us now. I am forever grateful to Dr. Petersen and the entire team for returning our little goofball to us, once again whole, happy and pain free.
