Houston, we have a problem!

For about 2 weeks now, Kisses' eye has been getting increasingly worse. It all started with what looked like dirty eye boogers. She has had this problem off and on for several years now. At first, we thought nothing of it, we would just wipe the clumps away every few days. Slowly those clumps of eye boogers began to get larger, and harder to wipe off. I knew we had a real problem when I wiped the eye boogers off one day and it appeared to have wiped away part of her lower right eyelid. This is when I knew I needed to get her checked out. Within two days, as I watched and waited for a good time to take her to the doctor, it went from bad to much, much worse! I made an appointment with our local vet to have her checked out. I woke up on the morning of her appointment and followed her into my office, as I do every morning. This is where she eats, high up on a book stand so the dogs can't get to her food. As she jumped up on the shelf, I scooped up some food and dumped it into her dish. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something alarming.. drips of blood on the shelf. I quickly turned her head to face me and was astonished to find that her eye was bleeding from the ulcerated area.  

After examining Kisses thoroughly, Dr. Graham suggested that she be taken to a specialist at the Emergency Vet Clinic down the street. My mind went immediately to the enormous vet bill that would come with that visit, and I asked if there was another option. Surely this could be handled in office, I mean, what could really be wrong? I figured she just needed a good dose of antibiotics and some good hygiene practices. With much hesitation, Dr. Graham gave us another option. She would not be able to do a biopsy, but she could take a culture and try some non invasive measures to see if those help. She gave her a treatment of antibiotics and prescribed some antibiotic drops to try to get it under control. She took a swab of the infection to have it tested, and gave us a sterile container to get a fecal sample for additional testing. We were instructed to apply the eye drops twice daily to her eye, and set up a follow-up appointment for two weeks out.

I was hopeful that this would do the trick. We went home and began the treatment as per doctors orders.