About a year and a half ago I thought I had lost him. I had been bringing him to the vet every couple months for at least a year. He would get lethargic and not do anything. He'd get mixed up and start walking in circles. Lots of strange stuff. The vet kept telling me it was most likely Anaplasmosis, a tick disease. It kept coming back though.
I brought him to a new vet who ran every test he could think of. He said he didn't think it could be Anaplasmosis, but every test he did came back great. He said he was one of the healthiest 7 year old labs he had seen. That just left the possibility of a brain tumor. Getting it diagnosed would cost a couple thousand, and even then they wouldn't be able to treat it. I was told to just enjoy what time I had left and when I felt he was in too much pain to bring him in and put him down.
A couple months pass and he's not eating anymore. I can hardly get him out the door to go to the bathroom. When I do he growls at me. He had never in his life growled at any one. A lot of the time he just pees in his bed and keeps laying there. I just wasn't ready to let go. Finally he starts puking, lays down outside, and won't move at all. I figured that was it. A new vet opened up closer to me, so I call him to make an appointment to put him down on Monday. He says he wanted to try one thing, but I didn't hold out much hope.
I bring him in and he wants to give him a shot to see if it's Addisons disease. It's when your adrenal glands don't work right. Within a couple days it was like a switched flipped with him. He was so hungry he actually chewed up the plastic container my parents used to store dog food. I was ready to have my dog put to sleep, and suddenly he was back. He's still not 100%, but he's doing ok. He's on a pretty high dose of his medicine, and I think he may need more. So I'm a bit worried as to how long this can last. Normal dogs his side should be on .8 mg of fludrocortisone. Right now he's at 1.8.
We'll see where it goes. I've had him a year and a half longer than I had expected. I'm just happy for the time we have right now.