Medical Scare

Following hot on the heels of Summit's pannus diagnosis we had a bit of a scare. I had enrolled Summit in a hemostasis study at school. I informed the researchers of the greyhound anomalies in bloodwork and coagulation and they still elected to include him in their study. He had two blood draws approximately 3 weeks apart. After the first draw his blood results showed a slightly elevated steroid induced ALP. This was shortly following all the gun fire at the agility field that we had been dealing with so I told them it wasn't a big deal. It wasn't very elevated anyway. With high s-ALP we worry about Cushing's, but usually the value will be very high. They were also concerned about his blood pressure which was very high. Again, I told them it was no big deal since he was a greyhound and he was probably a little stressed in the hospital. No one believes me when I tell them he's stressed at the hospital because he's so quiet and so good and just sleeps. But try giving him a plain dog cookie. He won't take it. If you give him something higher value he usually will, but normally even a plain cookie at home gets gobbled down.
Fast forward 3 weeks to his second test results. His s-ALP was still mildly high, his blood pressure was still very high (despite me being with him this time around), and now his urine protein:creatinine (UPC) ratio was super high. Of course everyone is freaking about glomerulonephritis (GN) but to me it just didn't make sense. It was so sudden. I had let him run around A LOT that week, and it wasn't the first pee of the morning (the creatinine was actually quite low and the protein wasn't all that different from the first test). I elected to rest him until Friday and bring in a new sample when he came back in for his blood donation. To say I wasn't concerned would be an understatement. The researcher was very concerned because there is no good physiologic reason for protein to show up in the urine, and greyhounds do have a tendency to develop GN. However, I really didn't think he had GN. I must have checked for lab results at least 6 times on Friday before they finally showed up. Totally normal.

I have no explanation for that elevated UPC other than the fact that he'd had a lot of hard exercise, it wasn't the first pee of the morning, and possibly test error. I'm just glad that the re-test showed nothing abnormal. Tomorrow he is back in to see ophtho to get a script for his eye drops that he will be on for the rest of his life. I am also hoping that his Doggles will be arriving soon. I ordered them about 4 or 5 weeks ago and the store estimated about 6. He's going to be a very cool dude with his camo print sunglasses!