TTouch & Pet Health

Nestle is wearing an overly large wrap to fully support his abdomen

Nestle is my 8 year old long haired Dachshund.  He has spent a great portion of this year being rather ill and teaching me a lot about the importance of TTouch in supporting physical health.

Being my furry kid, he gets TTouch a lot.  So it was that sort of relationship that helped me out when this illness came up.  One of the symptoms of Sterile Nodular Panniculitis (SNP) is a development of nodes or lumps on the body.  Believe you me, when this illness began and the lumps popped up, he suddenly felt very scary!  And it was due to TTouch that I discovered these lumps because his curly, fluffy, frizzy hair hides a lot and they couldn't be seen otherwise.  That is, till they got large.

Nestle came down with SNP in late March, early April.  He presented with astonishingly high fevers that would last about 24 hours, then go away for several days.  This went on for weeks and his energy was completely drained.  He barely had time to recover from one fever before another would hit.  Believe you me, I was visiting the vet A LOT!  And then the lumps came.  The vet did a biopsy and that's when this SNP was figured out.  That was somewhere around late June, early July.

Nestle also has hypothyroid and seizures so he takes medication for those.  On top of that he has been taking a long list of medications for his SNP.   Since refilling prescriptions is a regular thing, I keep my vet up to date on all things Nestle.  This week my concern was his belly, so we went in for a look over and an x-ray.    Turns out that the side effects of his meds have been rough on the poor little fella.  Basically, the meds are causing him to mimic the symptoms and signs of Cushing's Disease:  increased appetite, water consumption, urination, panting, and a bulging, pendulous abdomen.

His poor belly!!  Now that I know he's not just exploding from food (because he shouldn't be!), but rather, he's swollen and uncomfortable, I knew that giving him some relief would be welcome.   When I got home from the vet, I found a much too large wrap for him so as to really support his very large little belly.  Nestle is usually pretty funny about wraps.  He has to "freeze" for the first few seconds after one is put on.  Not this time!  The little guy smiled up at me and looked much more comfortable walking around.  He was clearly very happy and much more comfortable!  I left it on for about an hour then put it on again later when he went with me to the vet and could show off his wrap (while I got more meds).  I took the wrap off when we got home.

Nestle is experiencing water retention, adding to that large abdomen.  One thing I noticed when I took his wrap off was that his abdomen didn't appear so painfully large.  The wrap may have helped expel retained fluids from the lymphatic system, which I'm sure felt better as his behavior after the wrap was removed suggested that he was indeed still feeling much more comfortable.  Then later he had a good, long nap.  Astonishingly, the reduction in his abdominal swelling stayed down for several days following this one wrap session.

This SNP is taking forever to (hopefully) resolve.  When we began to come down from the strong steroid dose the first time, the lower dose resulted in a resurgence of the fevers and lumps.  So, he had to have his steroids bumped up again, and for a longer period.  We're still there, pumping in the steroids and hoping.  Honestly, it's killing me to watch this sweet little angle suffer so.  But, it's a blessing to know that I can do something to give him relief and comfort.

Thank God for TTouch.

Enjoyed this article?  Please subscribe to this blog and "Like" East Tennessee TTouch on Facebook!
Want to experience TTouch and learn more about it?  Head over to the "TTouch Store" tab and find out how you can get involved.