Before we left Michigan we made one more visit to the vets office for a
final checkup on our Boston Terrier. While we were there we asked if
there was anything that they would recommend for him since we would be
traveling across the country in and out of apartments and hotels and
such. Our vet strongly recommended that he get the Lyme vaccine seeing
as though he would be outside a lot more and in unknown places. We went
ahead (per her suggestion) and got him two vaccine boosters. This was
in Late July-Early August. Skip ahead to two weeks ago when he was
complaining of pain one night, we thought it was his neck that was
hurting (sometimes he shakes his toys too hard and kind of sprains his
neck)- but after giving him pain meds and babying the area for a week he
was progressively getting worse and the pain seemed to be spreading to
other areas. We took him in to a local vet we found and had some blood
work drawn and then we had some fluid taken from his lymph nodes that
were enlarged (lymph nodes on dogs are trigger areas that give you
warning for very serious diseases- when ours enlarge we may have a cold-
when a dogs enlarge they may have cancer). After that visit Tracy did
some serious research accounting for all of his symptoms. Zac was
currently having a problem every morning with moving (only after laying
for a long period did he have an issue), when he got up he would yelp
(not whimper) in pain for about five minutes straight. He also would
arch his back and have a hard time using his front two legs. He's also
been losing weight and has been not all together at times, coupling that
with the lymph nodes and the time the disease has presented- it spells
out Lyme Disease. We looked online for what exactly the Lyme
vaccination is and any other problems that other dog owners have had
with it and we found exact reports of what we have been dealing with.
Apparently when your animal is vaccinated against Lyme Disease it is
injected with a dead form of the virus which has a 20%+ chance of
presenting and is especially effective in dogs with lower immune systems
(which we were having a problem with before we left Michigan). The
dead virus creates an uncureable strain of the disease that will not
show up on any tests and will only present in the symptoms of the
animal. Apparently they had a version of this that they gave humans but
stopped it because too many people were getting the disease. In Dr.
school they teach a limit to the vaccines to give, in vet school they
teach to give every vaccine you can and give it every year- including Lyme disease.
We have started Zac on the strongest antibiotics that we can give him.
He has a small chance that this will knock out a large percentage of the
disease, although not cure him. He has about ten vials of medicine
that he is taking right now. He is crying a lot less so we are seeing
some improvement, although he goes through random spurts of extreme
pain. Please pray with us that God would heal his little body. It's
especially hard on Tracy to see his little body suffer so much and adds a
lot more stress to being so far away from home. Thank you for your prayers.
We're thinking of little Zac often! Although he's sick, I know he's happy to be loved by you both because you're fantastic parents. :)
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