Anyone have pets on daily medication?

[PegasusOnFire]

First I will start off by telling you that I am a Vet assistant. I have an 18 year old mongrel tabby that has recently been diagnosed with hypertyroidism, which is a disease in which the thyriod gland enlarges and produces high amounts of T4 a hormone. Some of the symptoms of this disease are sudden weightloss with an increased appitite. Tiger presented these problems and I took her in with me to work, where I was interning at the time and we ran a geriatric panel on her. This turned up a 6.3 T4 level, which is not high but it is too high for a cat. Tiger is now on tapizol once a day for the rest of her life to regulate her T4 levels. I was just wondering if other pet owners here have gone through similar things with their animals. I have also gone through the loss of one of my cats, he was 14 and got a very fast progressing mouth cancer, though he has been gone for a year it still is a very tough thing to think about.

 

[GREG]

i do..........

 

[PegasusOnFire]

Cool, what medication/disease is your animal on/have?

 

[retrogeek]

I hope your kitty does well.

We had both a cat and a dog that required twice-daily insulin injections for diabetes. The vet didn't expect either of them to last very long, but they both lived long and happy lives for many years after they were diagnosed.

Neither of them seemed to mind once they were conditioned to the routine. When our cat's injections were cut back to once just at breakfast we discovered that he wouldn't touch his dinner until you pinched him on the shoulder and pretended like you were using a needle.

 

[GREG]

Thyroid........ 2 pills a day

 

[PegasusOnFire]

Greg, is this a new thing or has your pet been going through this for a while? I ask this, because Tiger was on her thyroid medication twice a day for a month then we retested and now she is down to once aday.

 

[wblastyn]

My dog is kinda, he needs eye drops in every day because his eyes don't produce tear fluid to wash away dirt

 

[konniep]

My Min Pin used to have to be on meds for seizures. He would just get real stiff and fall over and a few seconds later he would get back up feeling all groggy. So I took him to the vet and that's what the diagnosis was. They said he may grow out of it and thank God, he has!! They put him on phenobarbital ( I think that's the way you spell it) But anyway, I always used to give it to him every morning before I went to work and as I took my meds. I have a ruptured disc in my neck and I have to take meds for it and I accidently took his meds thinking it was mine!!! LOL I told a friend about it just in case I started acting weird or something, LOL , Little did I know that humans can take that medication too. My friend told everyone at work and before I left for the day, everyone was barking at me!! LOL

 

[PegasusOnFire]

I have seen many owners do what you did. How did you like the going in every few mopnths to check your min pins phenobarb levels? I know lots of people who dreaded that part of it.

 

[draper]

My dog is on, I think, allergy pills and some other pil lthat she takes daily but I do not feed her so I wouldn't know for sure...

 

[onecrazycowgirl]

One of my horses is hypothyroidal - he doesn't produce enough. A while back he all of a sudden lost muscle tone and got really fat, and his hair got pretty brittle, but you can't accurately test horses' thyroids, so the vet said to put him on the meds for two months and see if it helped, and if not to get him tested for Cushing's.

I also have a horse on arthritis meds - glucosamine.

 

[GREG]

it has been 2 pills a day for 2 years now.....