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Friday, August 30, 2013

Sudden Acquired Retinal Degeneration - Acute Blindness


Exactly 10 days ago our Sarah was focused on her 9th or 10th birthday cake, angle food cake which is for an angel of a girl. 4 days later she is afflicted with blindness. We noticed yesterday that she acted like she could not see and with the little sleep we both got last night had her into the vet early this morning. I watched the vet check her and it was obvious her sight was gone.  The vet said she may see shadows but neither eye responded to the light in a dark room.

The vet said what she has is 'sudden acquired retinal degeneration' and it happens very suddenly and is very rare. It only happens to a few breed of dogs  and there is no treatment and no cure. In her case it happened in a couple days at most and probably only one day.  We noticed late yesterday she was acting different and did not see a treat when it was presented to her. We spend a very restless night and had her into the vet first thing this morning.

We have a very small house and Sarah is acquainted with every inch of it so she is coping well.  Much better than we are I admit. We both realize that it is a handicap that can be dealt with as we will be her sight and Bozwell has already undertaken helping her. What cuts us to the heart is when she looks at us and there is no sight there.  Her early life was one of abuse before we adopted her.  We patiently helped her over come her fears and we will help her deal with this too. We will be her eyes and our house is already designed so there are no hidden hazards. With her abusive life before us we feel Sarah deserved better. Regretfully that was not the case and we will deal with her handicap and help her to live a full life with a handicap. The vet tells us that there is no treatment and no cure and her condition is permanent. No idea of the cause as it is a very rare condition.

The vet believes that she may see shadows but nothing more. We pray she will not get worse and those shadows will help her cope with her disability. She is a very gentle, timid, sweet girl that is handling this much better than we are. This simply goes to show how suddenly things can change for all of us and we are measured by how we deal with adversity. Sarah is dealing very well with it and hopefully we will do better in time, since we feel so bad for her.  She is still a very sweet girl only now she can't see you when you may visit us but she will greet you just as lovingly as she has in the past.

2 comments:

Bruce said...

Comment by Mike: (crying),,,,My heart goes out to her, I feel so bad. God bless you guys, I am so thankful Sarah has you to look after her. She could be in no better hands.......... Gods plan.....
Give her a hug from Ms Pat and I.....

mike

Bruce said...

Comment by Jane: I am so sorry, you guys, but I will pray for God to heal her, because He can! Hey, as you can tell, our “kids” are so adaptable to situations, that’s probably why they give us unconditional love – they are so able to accept things that we can’t or don’t want to --- we had a wolf hybrid who went blind suddenly, but found that she had diabetes. So we started giving her insulin and had the cataracts surgically removed, and that was a blessing – but in the three months that she couldn’t see, she actually did quite well! it was unbelievable – didn’t slow her down much at all!

Blessings on all of you and don’t let the sadness cloud your day too long, as Sarah is probably much happier than you give her credit, because you two love her and she knows it! Jane