Toxic reaction to medication - MDR1?

[Rebecca bratter]

I"m reaching out for some advice and input here as our baby girl Madiba is in bad shape.  She is a 2 year old aussiedoodle, I think shes F2B, or the product of 2 aussiedoodles, I can say that her personality is for the most part, all Aussie, she is a seriously smart, playful, intuitive, somewhat human like dog with a strong herding instinct.

We had to hospitalize her last Wednesday as she came down with what is generally referred to as HGE, a catch all I guess for bloody, watery diarrhea coupled with abdominal pain.  We took her to her vet and she was given meds and a subcutaneous injection for dehydration.  She came home and by evening she was getting worse, in a lot of pain and breathing heavy, couldn't walk easily.  Early on thursday we took her to the 24 hour animal hospital, we have never been here before and it was not necessarily our choice, but it was an emergency . We visited her that evening after a full day of IV fluids and she was much much improved, looking great, usual happy self, we brought her bland chicken and rice and we limited it to a small serving and she gobbled it up.  Next day the doc called and said she was alert and looking good and could go home but he would ideally like to keep her another day to keep hydrating her.  No way we wanted to leave her there if we had a choice.  When we picked her up, I can only describe her state as looking as if she was heavily sedated combined with a light stroke.  She couldn't keep her eyes open and she couldn't stay on her feet, her back legs seemed weak and if she stayed upright for a few moments she couldn't keep her eyes open and she would fall asleep on her feet and fall over.  I can't tell you how alarmed and sad I felt to see this.  We have no experience with this situation so my husband and i mistakenly thought she was exhausted from her experience.  She's never spent a night away from both of us before.  But by evening, she was looking really bad.  She was not functional and just slept both on her feet and laying down and she couldn't seem to put her tongue back in her mouth.  We took her back to the hospital at 2am and talked to the vet about what could be causing this secondary reaction and then I started researching and googling like crazy.  So we know that many herding dogs carry the MDR 1 gene mutation and one of the medications they cannot tolerate is imodium.  Madiba was fine until they gave her imodium.  We thought it was the metronidazole so we pulled her off of that and I asked them to pull the imodium, but they didn't.  We had her detoxed and she was given activated charcoal and once that happened she did perk up a bit.  But her body temperature keeps dropping and her heart rate is slow.  We saw her yesterday and she was in bad shape again and I found out they have continued to give her imodium, i flipped.  Now they have pulled the imodium and are changing all of her meds.  She is completely out of her stupor and is alert, her diarrhea is subsiding but her vitals are not bouncing back and the docs can't seem to keep her temperature up, she is with a heat lamp and hot water packs.    Now about 24 hours have passed since her last imodium dose but honestly, I am just going on a theory here about MDR 1 and a toxic reaction to imodium.  I have spoke with poison control and asked if they could give her naxologene, which is supposed to be an anti dote, but they don't have it.

I am scared to death that I'm going to lose my precious baby if her vitals don't stabilize.  She is on constant fluids but she won't eat.  Is it possible that this substance takes a while to clear the body and she will bounce back once it does?  I know it affects the blood/brain barrier and it's not just in the bloodstream.  I have no experience  with this but seeing her complete change in mental state and alertness once off the imodium and her lapse into a sedated stupor when they give her this med, I am thinking she carries the MDR 1 gene and is reacting.  

Any thoughts or ideas from anyone who might have some experience with this would be greatly appreciated.  She's been in the hospital almost 4 days now.  I want her home desperately. We tested her for Addisons and she is negative and we had a sonogram and they saw nothing unusual.  Thanks.

[Gail and Bailey]

So glad to hear that Madiba is doing better!