One year ago Rilley's journey began

Rilley - One year later.

On this exact date one year ago today we embarked on this journey with our beloved beagle.  It was August 10, 2010 when Rilley first experienced a grand mal seizure on the floor of our bedroom.  A month later we had the official diagnosis of the meningioma tumour pressing on his brain.  With the shocking discovery and the bleak prognosis it seems strange how many positive things have fallen into place to save his life.  In fact the four-legged, furry proof is sitting right beside me as I write this.

However, not everything has been running smoothly of late.  Rilley seems to have been experiencing some minor focal seizures.  During our first visit to Minneapolis, Dr. Pluhar had told us that even with the tumour gone, his brain would be "wired" for seizures and that's why he cannot, ever, come of off his anti-seizure medication.  We've been fortunate so far in that we have never observed any seizure activity.  There is a consensus that it may have been a result in the slight drop in his dosage.  When we switched from administering his medication three times daily to twice a day the way the math worked out with the new caplets caused a slight drop in the total daily dosage.  Compounding the issue was the increased time between medications, which we believe may have caused the morning dose to begin to wear off before the evening dose was to be given.  We have now switched back to three daily doses.  Unfortunately, we've lost the convenience of not needing to give the midday dose.

One other suggestion that Dr. Pluhar had made was to buy Keppra XR, the extended release version of Rilley's anti-seizure medication.  However, when we called our local drug store, they hadn't heard of this variant of the drug.  The pharmacist even checked with the other distributor they use.  As usual, Sara doesn't give up that easily and she contacted the distributor of Keppra in Canada.  They told us that Keppra XR is not available in Canada.  I have a feeling that it just may not be approved for use here...yet.  We may try to contact the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to see if we could get permission to have it imported since it would be used for an animal and not in humans.  At the moment that is merely a thought...we don't even know if it would even be affordable.

Hopefully this is just a small bump in the road and that Rilley will continue to thrive.

Congratulations Rilley, from a six week prognosis to a year later you've come a long way!