FCE Embolism

[Scsbert]

My 4 year old male lab recently suffered a FCE Embolism. It's now been 10 days. The right side of his body is what was effected. He is now showing signs of sitting up or at least raising his head. He will also stand, with assistance, for a couple minutes but you have to place his right rear and right front limbs. But when we try to walk with him, with a two handled harness, his right limbs just dangle like noodles. He's had several therapy treatments and we have a few more scheduled next week. His bladder requires manual expression and #2 requires our assistance. We're devastated......

Anyone out there been thru this??

[bett]

today the board might be slow but stick around.
perhaps with therapy he will get back some of what he lost.
I'm so sorry for what you all are going thru.

is there a specialty vet for him?

[kimbersmom]

I'm so very sorry to read this.

The prognosis for dogs with FCE are much better than they used to be, but a lot depends on the severity of the stroke.

In 2012, our perfectly healthy 7-year-old lab suddenly fell screaming while playing fetch and had no control over her back end. The neurosurgeon at the Virginia Tech Vet School was able to narrow the cause down to either an FCE or high velocity vertabrae extrusion, but both had the same treatment so Kimber was released to us. Right away, I started working with a rehab vet in the area. Every day, multiple times a day, we did the passive resistance exercises with her. She had laser therapy and acupuncture right away. About three weeks after the injury we were able to get her into a neighbor's swimming pool (with a life jacket on) and that made a world of difference to her recovery. Within 6 months, she was about 85% back to normal. Once a month, she gets chiropractic work and acupuncture. Although we never got a definitive diagnosis, she has some residual pain leading our rehab vet to think it's more likely she had the high-velocity injury than FCE, but the two are very similar and I did a lot of research on FCE.

Does your dog still have deep pain reflexes? That seems to be a good determinant of how well the dog will recover. Sadly, if there's no deep pain reflex, that limb's chances of recovery are very low. But if the reflex is there, it's a very good sign.

I second bett's suggestion of a specialty vet. Our rehab vet was much more creative and aggressive about treatments than even the vet school doctors were. If you have any kind of water opportunities- swimming or a water treadmill- those can be really helpful.

I hope your dog continues to improve. Kimber walks with a limp and drags her back left leg a little bit, but she still loves to chase squirrels and go on walks and do basic agility.
Kimber is still her Kimber-iffic self and I'm grateful for each day we have with her.

[SunDance]

I have no experience with this but wanted to send good thoughts for his recovery. Welcome to the board.

[Annette47]

Our girl Scully had a suspected FCE about 3 weeks before we lost her at age 15 (to kidney failure - not from the FCE), and we worked with her quite a bit and she was definitely showing signs of improvement (went from unable to walk to walking with assistance, and swimming was much improved) when she suddenly stopped eating which was led to the diagnosis of kidney failure. She didn't lose bladder/bowel control though - just couldn't use her hind legs to walk, so might have had a milder case.

I do strongly recommend consulting a rehab vet though and sending you good thoughts - 4 is way too young to go through something like this.

[Polly Pipkin]

So sorry to hear this. I have no experience, but it sounds like Kimber has done remarkably well! Hope your pup recovers as well!

[Snowshoe]

No experience here either but more good wishes for a good outcome. I sure just learned a lot about this.

[MikeLynn]

No experience here either; just wanted to send our good wishes for a speedy and, hopefully, complete recovery

[kimbersmom]

Another resource is Index page HandicappedPets.Net

It's not as active as this forum so you may have to wait a few days for a response, but they have a whole section just for paralysis issues, including FCE. The people on that forum have a lot of experience to share. Here's a semi-recent thread you may find helpful: View topic - Another FCE victim HandicappedPets.Net

[POPTOP]

Hello and Welcome!

So sorry it is this that brings you here. No experience; wanted to send along prayers and good thoughts for recovery.