Maggie......

Our family had some sad news the past couple of days and I'm only now able to process it and write about it. You see, our dog, Maggie, has been diagnosed with Glaucoma. This disease is a build up of pressure on the optic nerve that leads to blindness.

We've been noticing that the last couple of months Maggie's eyes have been watering, but we just just assumed it was from allergies. Then at the beginning of this past week her left eye started looking horrible--red, swollen and Maggie was barely able to keep it open. So we made an appointment with her vet and believed it to be a normal eye infection. But the vet was unsure of what was wrong with Maggie's eye so she sent Maggie (and Jim) to a veterinarian eye specialist who diagnosed Glaucoma. The specialist said Maggie already has some vision loss in her left eye.
So...we have begun an aggressive treatment of four types of eyedrops to slow the blindness in the left eye and keep the right eye from losing any vision.

Jim has devised the perfect chart to keep track of these eyedrops that have to be given daily three/four times with five minutes between drops. He started giving the drops on Thursday but I gave them all day  yesterday because he went to Chicago to get Becky from summer school and bring her home. I had to pry her eye open (a difficult feat) and then give the drops. But after yesterday I feel better about the whole thing because the treatment seems to be working. She even walked ME around Pheasant Branch yesterday morning (5 miles!!).

But what's the prognosis????

Eventually she will lose all vision in her left eye and it will have to be removed. At that time the eye will be examined to see if it's primary or secondary Glaucoma. Primary means it was inherited and the second one will get it. But the GOOD news is an operation can be performed on the right eye, a shunt placed in the eye and the process of deterioration will vastly be slowed. But if it's secondary it means there is another cause for the left eye blindness--a tumor, another disease, etc. and the right eye will not be affected. We pray it's secondary....