Brogan’s heart update – part 2

I’ll give a brief recap for those of you who haven’t read the original post, or first update. Brogan is in heart failure, has been for a while, but in the last couple of months he started having more collapses and other strange episodes that kinda pointed towards his heart deteriorating. We ended up repeating his echocardiogram and that showed that his heart wasn’t deteriorating, but didn’t explain what was causing him to have more symptoms. So the cardiologist recommended a few things. You can read the full post here and the follow up here

We finally got all of Brogan’s test results back. One of the tests that they wanted done was for Lyme disease. Lyme disease hasn’t been studied a lot in dogs yet, but the cardiologist figured it was worth ruling out. That is a very simple blood test, and we got those results fairly quick…negative…which is fantastic news, but left more questions as to what might be causing his issues.

The next thing they recommended was discontinuing 2 of his medications, so we discontinued one immediately. The other one has mixed information as to how to discontinue it, do you do it cold turkey, or do you wean them of. I decided to play it safe and slowly wean him off over a 2 week period. While we were in the process of weaning him off that drug we got him fitted with a holter monitor to monitor his hearts electrical activity for an extended period of time. This is the same tool that they use with people. Instead of giving a brief snippet of your hearts rhythm and electrical impulses it gives an extended reading so that the cardiologist can see what happens with your heart in your normal daily routine.

We had his monitor set for 48 hours in the hopes that we could capture an “episode” during that time. He got it put on on a Friday and wore it until Sunday, while doing everything we would normally do on a weekend. I took it off Sunday afternoon and then dropped it back off at the Vet clinic on Monday. Of course he didn’t have any episodes, but I was hoping we would get something useful from it anyway.

While we were waiting for those results we had gotten him off the 2 medications that the cardiologist recommended and both my hubby and I noticed that Brogan seemed younger, more goofy and definitely more energetic. He never wants to come back from a walk now, and will bug Rosco to play with him again. It’s fantastic to see him seem so young again.

Yesterday we got word that his holter monitor didn’t show anything significant. That is great news, but does leave the question of his symptoms getting worse unanswered, however, that being said I kinda think it was his one medication. In all my reading about that medication it shows that some of the side effects of it in people are exactly what he was displaying, dizziness, fainting and headaches are listed in people, we definitely saw the first 2 in him. So perhaps we have our answer…and I’m sure hoping that we do. Because if it was as simple as discontinuing 2 drugs to get our goofy Brogan back I will take it.

I’m undecided if that means we will brave off leash excursions again, or just stick to on leash walks and increasing those for now. But whatever we do, I’m celebrating the fact that he feels great, and seems much younger than his soon to be 7 years. So here’s hoping that we have the answer and we get to enjoy him for many many more years to come.