Hello,
My dog was scratching for a while then had a pretty aggressive ear infection, after i took him to the vet i started treating it with a short course of prednisone and antibacterial eardrops, one day after finishing the Prednisone course i noticed my dog face being droopy and asymmetrical on the side of the ear with the infection(right side), that was yesterday, he was drooling a bit and i noticed his right eyelids not closing fully or reacting properly to movements towards the eye, i immediately took him to the vet and he had a full blood panel tests done thyroid tests and toxoplasmosis tests and everything came back fine except for slightly elevsted ALT, ALKP and Retic which the doctor attributed to the Prednisone course, they also took a swab from the infected ear and looked at it under a microscope and said that no bacterial infection is showing, the doctor also physically examined his eyes , ears teeth and walk and deemed everything normal other than the eyelids issue in the left eye and sligth droopiness in the right side of the jaw and his third eyelid is working snd pupil response to light is working.
the doctor diagnosed it as idiopathic nerve damage and prescribed continueing the prednisone and added gabapentin and vitamin B12 to the treatment and said to monitor over the next week and see if sny progress happens then if no progress he said we need to do a CT or MRI scan on him.
2 things are worrying me , it seems really hard for me to believe that this is unrelated to the ear infection since it happened right after stopping the prednisone so im not sure what to believe , also im worried there might be an inner ear infection masked by the Prednisone course and not being treated currently.
I'm really worried for my boy and i'm not sure whst to do, should u go for more examinations at other vets or follow the treatment plan and wait , im already following the treatment plan as recommended but im worried we might not be covering all basis if an inner ear infection is present.
My dog is a 6.5 year old male pitbull 27 kg
Prescribed dosages
esomeprazole once a day for stomach protection Gabapentin 100 mg twice a day Prednisone 10 mg once a day A weekly vit b12 injection Milga nerve tonic( b12) daily
I'm happy to share any extra details.
Any advice is really appreciated, thanks!