In Loving Memory of SA Champion Cathay Jiang Qing at Arowana

For a special lady you do special things. What happened was that on Thursday evening she was not feeling well so we nursed her the evening and fell asleep at 23:00 hours. She woke Aad up at 04:00 hours needing to go outside. He realised that her right hindleg had a largely swollen hock and she could hardly walk on it. The next morning at about 11:00 hours her leg was so swollen that she could hardly stand on it and blood started oozing out of her tissue. We were very worried and took her to the Vet. They were not sure what was happening either so did full blood panel and they took pictures of the leg. We send those pictures together with her bloodwork to Dr. Jeff Vidt in the USA and his very quick reply and diagnosis was most likely Streptococcal Toxic Shock Syndrome (STSS).

Never having heard about this disease we looked up everything we could find on the Internet, and realised that she would not stand a change recovering, but you never give up. The survival rate for this disease in humans and in animals is about 20-30% at best. Realising that in the end she would die from multiple organ failure we had to make sure to not let her suffer too much, while we were still hoping for a recovery (yeah that 20-30%). In the meantime she was already on the drip and getting anti-biotics. The problem here is that you need to know what causes the infection, which bacteria, in order to administer the correct anti-biotics, and that process, the culture, takes about 48 hours, which we knew we did not have. Friday night she could still walk, however difficult, so we walked her a bit outside the Vet's place. We were seeing improvement (we thought) and went back home to sleep. On Saturday the situation definitely detoriorated and she had to be fed through a drip. Early Saturday evening when we arrived at the vet we could hear her yelling, but as soon as we arrived and sat down with her it stopped. We had learned that we should closely monitor her blood pressure and would face a gruesome decision if it suddenly dropped. At 20:45 hours we did not trust the monitoring device anymore, because her blood pressure readings were erratic and not understandable. Antoinette even tried to get a device in from another vet. Then she learned that if the blood pressure drops below a certain point, all machines will show erratic readings, so we new the time had come. Antoinette was still not convinced, and it took the vets a lot of talking to explain to her that at this stage we could amputate both her hind legs without knowing if the disease had not already spread beyond her legs. So, finally at 22:00 hours we held her in our arms and she passed away peacefully.

Everyone should understand that we are not in the medical profession at all and are just trying to explain our side of the story in the hope that it will be helpful to someone in the future. Research on this disease is not huge, because it is such a rare disease. We have requested for a full necropsy (autopsy) and for  red congo stain test on her liver and kidneys. The report we got back was that yes she was diagnosed with STSS and no she tested negative for Amyloidosis/Familial Shar Pei Fever (FSF). This leaves us puzzled because we thought it to be a complication of FSF (see article Dr. Jeff Vidt). All we know is that in the end of the day we made an informed decision to not let her suffer anylonger.

Our sincere thanks go to Larry van Niekerk, Kenneth Joubert and staff from Fourways Veterinary Hospital for there knowledge, support and good care and Dr. Jeff Vidt from the USA for his on the spot diagnosis.

For people who still want to read more about STSS or TSS, search Google with the words "toxic" "shock" "syndrome", and if you are only interested in the canine variant add the word "animal".

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