Epilepsy treatment

[jenfitzh20]

Not sure if this has already been discussed but I wanted to share the experience (hopefully success) one of our rescue dogs has had with the gold bead implants. I have to admit, when I first heard the adopter was going to try this, I was skeptical. Gold beads?? Sounds ludicrous but what do I know. Not a lot about epilepsy nor acupunture so I figure what the heck, give it a shot. Mike's seizures had become more frequent and it wasn't looking good for him so this really was a final shot at a normal life for him. Below are a few exerpts of emails from his adopter on his progress.

 

Jan 29, 2007:

"Last Friday I took Mike to see a vet acupuncturist, Dr. Pat Stapley-Chase, who practices out of Cobourg. Mike is scheduled for surgery on February 15, 2007, to have the gold bead treatment. The beads will be implanted and will be permanent. There is an article at http://www.himmlisch.com/koriegold.htm which explains the procedure, which was perfected by Dr. Terry Durkes. There is an article written by him at

http://lochvale.freeservers.com/Durkes.htm Pat took some of her training with Dr. Durkes.

 

In 60% of the cases, the dogs are cured. They no longer have seizures and no longer need medication.

 

In 20% of the cases, the dogs will no longer have seizures but do take medication at a reduced dose.

 

In 20% of the cases the dogs will continue to have seizures. Some of the dogs will not be helped at all. Let's hope Mike fits somewhere in the 80%.

 

If Mike has a lot of seizure activity near the 15th of February, the procedure will have to be postponed, so I am keeping my fingers crossed."

 

(Mike had a seizure just before his first appointment for the surgery in mid-February and then another one on Feb 24th. They had to postpone the surgery until March 8th. )

 

April 13th:

">It has now been five weeks since Mike's surgery and we started reducing his

>medication last week. He has not had a seizure since February 24th, so that

>makes it 48 days. keep your fingers crossed."

 

May 2nd:

"Mike is doing very well - he's had his medication reduced again and is still seizure free!"

 

I know there are some here that are involved with epilepsy research so thought I'd pass this along. We are very hopeful about Mike's future. He had a rough life before reaching rescue. His previous owners knew he had epilepsy and did nothing, said they couldn't afford to treat him plus they were feeding him very cheap dog food. He'd actually been in 3 different homes before reaching us. When we got him in rescue, we got him on regular meds (good food) and the seizures became managable, I believe he was having them about every 45-60 days. After adoption, they increased quite a bit even though the adopter kept him on exactly the same meds. They changed meds around a bit to try to decrease them but nothing was working. Her vet suggested trying acupunture and thats what brought her to the gold bead implantation. (BTW, the procedure was done in Canada.)

 

Jennifer

www.mokanbcrescue.org

[Allie Oop]

Very interesting. I had a GSD/Rough Collie who developed very severe seizures the last 3 years of his life. They were manageable with meds twice a day, but the dosages were very high. It would have been nice to have been able to try an alternative treatment to see if it would have helped.

 

I wish Mike and his new family the best of luck.

[Wendy V]

Managing epilepsy is more art than science. I am glad that your adopter has found something that has benefitted their dog. However, every dog is different, and one must keep an open mind when handling the seizure dog. Different dogs respond to different therapies. I, personally, never consider that epilepsy is "cured", only that it's expression is latent. For that reason, I used a very conservative time frame when reducing anti-seizure meds in my epi-dog.

 

Again, I am glad that they have found success in reducing the seizures.

 

(Ellie, 12yo, 3 1/2 years seizure-free, raw-fed, no meds for the past 6 months)