Oh dear, yes :sadsmile: They are such a pain (and painful for the pup too!!)
My 13 yr old Boston Terrier has corneal endothelial degeneration which makes her prone to ulcers. She got one in July and it took us about 3 months to resolve it!! She woke up one weekday morning with a squinty eye. I called into work and took her straight to our regular vet initially who gave me triple antibiotic drops to give her 3-4 times daily. At our one week recheck, there was no noticeable improvement. She is mostly blind in one eye and OF COURSE, her ulcer was in her good eye, so I wasn’t going to play around with it. I scheduled a visit to her veterinary opthalmologist (who is 1.5 hours away which is why I didn’t go directly to him at first) and he was able to see us the very next day.
Because she didn’t respond favorably to the triple antibiotic ointment, the vet was concerned that she had an antibiotic resistant bacteria in the ulcer. Plus she had some “pitting” in the ulcer that could eventually lead to what they term a “melting ulcer”, in which case the eye can actually rupture at the weak point of the ulcer. Not a good scenario! He hit it with the big guns! I had two types of antibiotics that were to be given 6-8 times a day, one antibiotic that was to be given 3-4 times per day, and he made the serum from her blood that was to be given 3-4 times per day for 3 days (at which time that stuff goes bad and should be disposed of). She also had a moisturizing gel that I applied to her eye 3-4 times per day to help provide lubrication over the ulcer and I had Tramadol pills that I could give her if needed for pain. Thank God I didn’t have to give her eye drops overnight or I would’ve never made it!! I had to wait 5 minutes between each drop so it was sometimes a 20 minute ordeal!! :eek: The vet said as long as I was getting them in as often as I could during the day, she should be ok for the overnight hours. We were going back for rechecks 7-10 days apart for a few weeks to make sure we were progressing in the right direction.
At one of the followup visits, he performed a procedure (can’t remember the exact name!) where he used a needle to scrape the edges of the ulcer to help encourage her eye to produce more regenerative tissue and heal the ulcer. Had this not worked, we would’ve done the surgery you mentioned. Fortunately we had good results and no further surgery/procedures were required. I was eventually able to taper down the dosages on all of her antibiotic drops (thank goodness!!) and for a few weeks she was also on a drop that was to help dissolve any scar tissue on the eye. I feel lucky that she healed as well as she did because ulcers can be very persistent in older dogs, since their bodies typically don’t have the ability to regenerate/recover as quickly or as well as younger dogs. She does have a bit of lingering scar tissue that affects her vision slightly but otherwise she healed up great.
My advice - don’t play around! If you don’t see immediate improvements with the intial treatments, have your vet quickly move on to the next antibiotic, next treatment option, or find a specialist nearby who sees ulcers on almost a daily basis. My specialist mentioned that he has seen an uptick in what seems to be antibiotic resistant bacteria when using the triple antibiotic drops - so he often will go straight to other types of antibiotics if ulcers are slow to respond. Ulcers can go from bad to worse in a really short period of time, and as mentioned, they’re very painful for the dog. In my dog’s case, we HAD to save that eye because she would be almost totally blind without it (and she almost was during the worst of the ulcer!). Good luck with your pup and let us know how it goes!! :yes:
