Some of you may remember that I lost my Espresso two weeks ago yesterday.
We thought that she had chewed up some roach baits and was poisined.  This
is almost certainly not the case.  The pathology lab found that she had
extensive liver damage that could not have been helped.  We do know for
certain that she had injested some sort of toxin.  They suggested three
possible causes.  They were sago palm (we have no plants), iron, and
myco-toxins.  The last two are possibilties, but the vet said she did not
think a fert could be poisined so quickly unless she ate an entire meal of
moldy food, and that I would have been able to tell the food was bad.  As
for iron, my husband does take iron supplements, and he may have dropped one
of them on the floor.  It seems strange to me that she would have eaten an
iron pill, don't they taste bad?  I guess we won't ever really know what
happened, but I would like to know if any of the fml vets have anything to
say about it.  Here is what happened again: Espresso was estremely lethargic
when I got up in the morning.  She would not even lift herself to get a
drink of water, but only leaned over to take a drink.  The night before
however, she was playing and seemed fine.  My husband said he was playing
with her at about 1 in the morning and I noticed she was sick at 8 in the
morning, so this happened in a matter of only 7 hours.  I brought her to the
hospital and they did surgery to check for blockage immediately.  There was
none.  There was blood dripping from her stitches and apparently her blood
was not clotting properly.  She never really woke up from the anesthetic.
She died just after noon.
 
The histopathology fax we recieved reads as follows:
Diagnosis: Hepatic necrosis, massive acute severe
Comment: the hepatic lesion is indicative of a hepatotoxin.  Some
possibilities include sago palm, iron, and myco-toxins.
 
I would appreciate any opinions about what this might be so I can be more
careful to protect my Seymour.
 
                --Barbara Thomas
[Posted in FML issue 1732]