First, let me introduce you to Sidney - our happy little Chocolate Labrador puppy. He was born on 9/26/2009.
Sidney has congenital megaesophagus and has had it since he was born, but we didn't figure out the actual diagnosis until 12/7/2009.
At first, when we brought him home he would regurgitate (for sake of typing throughout the blog I'll just refer to it as RG) his food in big, undigested blobs. He spent several days and nights at the vet while we were trying to figure out what was wrong. He was dehydrated and underweight. One afternoon he must have RG'd at least 10-15 times in one hour - so I rushed him to the vet and they kept him there and did what they call a Barium Swallow test - to see the shape of his esophagus and called me into the room to give me the bad news. The basic diagnosis is that the guy will not live very long and dogs with this condition really don't have a great chance of success.
Unwilling to let Sidney suffer and die, we searched the internet for information about this disorder and luckily found a Yahoo Support Group that, in my opinion, saved his life. So anyone reading this that has a dog diagnosed with megaesophagus, please go to:
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/megaesophagus/
Knowing how panicked, scared and sad we were about losing Sidney, I decided to start this blog about our experiences with this condition to prove to everyone out there that megaesophagus is NOT A DEATH SENTENCE. I read a quote from an ME dog parent that I loved:
"Our dogs do not die from megaesophagus, they die of old age with megaesophagus."
Every dog is different and the routine and food and medicine depends on trial and error for your dog, but I will update his current progress and explain what we do and how we do it. Thanks for reading and we hope this information will help someone else with their pet.
UPDATE: 5/11/2010: It has now been 5 months since the diagnosis and he started at 14 pounds. He now weighs 40 pounds and counting.
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