Azita just turned one in April, she is a happy, incredibly independent, stubborn, lab and boxer mix and she is my absolute savior and best friend.
I came home from work one day and she didn’t come to greet me like she usually does, I went to my room and she was laying on the bed, she looked at me and I noticed that the eye lid in her left eye was covering her entire eye and was completed blood shot and swollen.
I immediately rushed her to the vet where she was diagnosed with conjunctivitis and given drops, Azita only wanted to sleep. A week later and no improvement made, my sweet grandparents noticed while I was at work that now both of her eye lids were covering her eyes and again, bloodshot and swollen, Azita still was only sleeping and wanted nothing to do with the world. They took her to their vet and was diagnosed with conjunctivitis and sent home with new drops.
A week later, Azita’s eyes had cleared up and she was playing and jumping around and happy again. I was relieved. We went to bed on a Saturday night and I woke up Sunday morning and her left eye was cloudy and swollen and she was back to just wanting to sleep and she wanted nothing to do with her food or her favorite cookies. I ran her back to the vets office and they did the third eye check with lights, drops, and pressure checks and they couldn’t give me an answer to what was causing this to happen. Her vet made an appointment with the ophthalmologist and sent us home.
The next day, Azita was still not eating and she just looked so much worse. I decided to take her to the ER where her ophthalmologist worked and I was told the pressure in her eye was so high that she would need to stay over night for around the clock care as her eye pressure was in the high 30’s. The next day the ophthalmologist diagnosed her with uveitis and secondary glaucoma and sent us home with 3 different oral medications and 2 different eye drops to be taken throughout the day until our recheck in a week. Azita’s eye pressure had dropped into the low 20’s and she was hopeful that we could try to save as much of Z’s sight as possible but told me to also realize that there was a large chance she would lose her sight.
Our recheck the next week showed that there was scar tissue building up in her eye and her eye was not responding to light, we talked about the chance of enucleation and decided to keep her on the drops and the pills for another week. When Z and I showed up for the re-check of the re-check it was the worst of the worst. Z was 100% blind and her eye would need to be removed as soon as possible. I lost my cool in that room, I had come to terms with the fact I would have a cyclops for a dog the week before but actually hearing it out loud killed me.
Azita’s surgery is set for the 5th of July and we both are excited to be free of pain and discomfort. She is pretty cute as it is and she’ll be even more adorable as a baby cyclops.
This is very similar to how my dog was diagnosed. At first they thought she had conjunctivitis. The young vet however was smart enough to realise that it might be something more and told me to come in the next day for the head vet to take a look. That was when she was diagnosed with glaucoma.
Anita looks very sad but you will notice a change after the operation.