Thrombocytopenia

Not a good day. Took Simone to the vet for her red eyes, convinced she had pink eye or something, but the vet said that wasn't it. It appears that she is bleeding behind her eyes and cannot see out of the right one, and only has partial vision out of the left. The vet immediately suspected a rodenticide poisoning, and then listed off an autoimmune disorder in which her white blood cells are attacking her red blood cells, cancer as other possibilities for her symptoms. The vet was hesitant to tell me anything until the tests come back, but told me that she was "very worried".

They took blood out of three of her legs and gave her a giant shot of vitamin K (19 mL...I've never seen a syringe that big) to help her coagulate better, and then sent us home to wait by the phone to hear the results of the blood work.

At 6pm the vet called. Simone's platelet levels are dangerously low (5,000...they should be at 165,000). This means she is not able to clot properly. She has a tentative diagnosis of thrombocytopenia. This might be caused by an autoimmune disorder (then it would be called immune-mediated thrombocytopenia), in which her immune system has suddenly decided to target her platelets, or it might be caused by something else, like canine ehrlichiosis (a bacterial infection transmitted by a tick). As we were in Northern Nevada and California in the last 5 weeks or so, the tick bite might be a possibility. They are running a tick titre on her blood now; we should have the results in 6 days and know for sure. In the meantime, they have started her on a high dose of steroids and an antibiotic (in case it's the ehrlichiosis). She will be getting her blood checked every other day to see if her platelet count starts to rise. We'll know more once the tick titre comes back and after she's had her first few platelet counts.

If it's the autoimmune disease, then she'll be on steroids for the rest of her life. If it's caused by a tick, then the antibiotic should kick it eventually. We've been told it could still be caused by something else entirely (cancer was mentioned as a possibility not to be ruled out just yet), but we won't go there until we have to.

Keep your fingers crossed for us.