Max's Eye 10-30-11

Max's right eye (on your left) has a bulging pink thing

Closer look at the pussy ping swelling on Max's eye

I know it's been a while since I updated Max's blog. The good news is he's doing fantastic!
To follow up on his eye situation, I took him to the eye doctor on Fri. (Did you know you can't call an eye doctor down here directly and make an appointment? You need to go to get your regular vet to refer you?) Anyway, the eye doctor took a look at his eye and stuck some strips of paper in his eye and then showed me how much moisture came out of each eye. The good eye - his left eye read 18 and the bad eye read 8.  He pointed out when your eye hurts you usually produce more tears but in Max's case he was producing less. He then told me that with any kind of radiation they commonly see "dry eye" as he put it, and the tear glands dry up or stop working. He said the fact that Max had radiation on his head makes him 99% sure that that is what is going on. Where Max has the attrophe above his right eye, is where he said the tear glands are generally found. He looked at a few more things and then said, "yup that's it. Dry eye."
I then got a quick lesson on the irrigation system of the eye and he told me that because Max's eye was dry, the abraision from when he fell wasn't able to heal because the surface of his cornea was dry and bumpy vs. smooth and lubricated.

The end result is that Max was prescribed eye drops that he gets 3 times a day and an ointment that has some antibiotic and bacterial properties as well as anti-swelling properties that he gets 2 times a day.  He said in a few days his eye would start to look better but it would be a while until it was back to normal, but it should go back to normal, and wanted to see him again in 3-4 weeks.

It's been 2.5 days and I'm starting to see his eye being a little more clear and definitely more lubricated. He's started to rub his eye after I put the ointment in but all in all he's tolerating it pretty well. I also think he's starting to be able to see a little better as of tonight.

As for Max's over all progress, he is doing FANTASTIC!  He's had a ton of energy, he's no longer super lethargic, in fact I think he's been getting bored hanging out at home so much. This morning I took him and his brother Buster up to the park to see how he'd do and he walked a good 3/4 of a mile and was ready to keep going! We explored the playground, he stuck his head in a bush and apparently caught the scent of some critter, but I thought it wasn't a good place for his eye so we had a little battle of wills to get his head out of the bush, then he discovered where the park workers had tossed bread on the ground for the birds and deer and he and Buster tried to gobble up as much as possible (nope.. that's not on his diet at all). Then he decided he wanted to walk the mile path down to the water. We got about 1/4 of the way down there and I decided that wasn't going to be a good idea, just in case something happened. So.. we wandered around the field, sniffed for critters (yet managed to avoid the possum arm that some other larger critter had ripped off and left in the field - yes kind of gross and I feel bad for the possum, but also am a little worried about what critter in the woods down the road is ripping arms out of possum).

Friday after Max's eye appointment we took a pitstop at PetCo (where the pets go) and Max was very excited to explore and search for fallen food, and play with the critters behind the glass (fish, ferrets, guineapigs, mice). He had a very active day and did really well!

He also can hear, all be it selective hearing, he definitely can hear when he wants to. I also caught him attempting to climb up on the kitchen table to finish off my salad a little while ago. We've reduced his prednisone down to 10mg  every other day (we did increase it back up to every day early last week because he had started to lose his hearing again).  Max is back to leading the barking when someone comes home, or there's someone out front and he sees or hears them.