It's Halloween Season!

Today seems like the first day that we have just had some time to breathe, and it feels good. Ava is doing better and even has a bit of her old spark back. She isn't sleeping as much during the day and is even letting us pet her and hold her without screaming in pain. She still doesn't feel comfortable cuddling on my lap or next to us all that often, but last night she did lay down next to me for a while, so that was good. :)

We switched her food to Natural Balance L.I.D. Fish & Sweet Potato. It came highly recommended and Ava seems to like it. Plus, it's something we can feed forever if it works, AND we can feed it to Jack, too. So, we are hoping it works. She is also on an herbal supplement and fish oil.

Anyway, since we had a free day today, we decided to bring out the Halloween box. We don't have many decorations, but we wanted to get out the few we had. The great thing about this town is that everyone really loves to decorate for the holidays. I've never lived somewhere where people started decorating BEFORE me. haha

We also winterized the air conditioners, unpacked our winter clothes and sent our summer clothes to the basement until next season. Sad day. But we got a lot done today, and I think later this afternoon we are going to head into town for the Apple Harvest Festival. Apparently, they are supposed to sell killer apple fritters. :)

Happy Halloween Season all!

Scary Morning and A Trip to a Holistic Vet

We had an appointment today at 9 a.m. with a holistic vet about an hour away in Westport, CT. I have been wanting to try a holistic approach with Ava, since we've been working with traditional medicine for the last several months and have come up blank.

Joe had today off, so we both got up early and took showers before I got Ava out of bed. When I saw her, I totally freaked out. One of her eyes was completely gooped up! It reminded me of when I used to have pink eye as a kid. Great, we thought, yet another symptom!

I took a picture of it to show the vet and then cleaned it up as we headed out the door.

When we got there, the holistic vet walked out into the lobby and said, "This must be my complex case!" That would be us. Always the complex case.

He had already looked over her entire medical history and made a few phone calls to some of his friends in the field about her condition. When I told him about the 'new symptom', he started the exam with her eyes. After a few minutes, he found the cause - she had a hairball under her eyelid! Not sure how that got in there, but when he pulled it out, it was pretty gross. He said he was sure that was the cause of her eye goop and not actually related to her other issues. A good thing, I guess. We now have an ointment to put in her eye twice daily.

After he examined her some more, he talked us through some things he thought she may have. One was this rare disease called Enhanced Bartonella Culture, which is a blood test that has to be sent to this specific lab in North Carolina and it could take months to get the results back. And he also gave us names of a few dermatologists that he suggested we see (this has come up before, so will probably be a next step). But he also said that it seems very auto-immune related to him (which has been the general consensus so far).

The thing I really liked, though, is he gave us an herbal supplement to start using and told us to up her intake of fish oil (which we are already giving her). He also said that we need to start eliminating things from her diet and stick to a one-protein diet to see if maybe a food allergy could be causing some of this. He suggested we start her on a fish protein. So, we went to the store and found a 100% salmon dog food that we are going to try.

Ava actually didn't really mind these vets. They were very sweet to her and held her and talked to her through the whole thing. Plus, they didn't poke and prod her like the others, so she was actually fairly content. Joe and I liked them, too. They are actually very interested in her case and said they will ask around some more to see if anything else comes up. And he really wants us to let him know the final diagnosis as well.

So I guess next steps are to see a dermatologist, test for this rare Bartenella thing, try to eliminate any food contaminants, then treat her for auto-immune. We will have to get an echocardiogram as well.

Fun stuff.

Update on Ava #2

The blood work came back today and once again, it was inconclusive. The vet said that there were some liver levels that were elevated (for those of you interested - her AST was 541, her ALT was 736, and her CPK was 318) that he was concerned about, but everything else was in the normal range.

The immune panel came back normal as well, but he said he was STILL thinking it was an immune problem. He said sometimes these results get false negatives and all her other symptoms screamed auto immune to him. He wants to treat for auto immune, which would mean upping her Prednizone to three times the amount she is getting now, but is hesitant to do so without a cardio consult.

She has developed a heart murmer amidst all of this and he said he needs to rule out heart damage before upping her meds. He said if he ups the meds and she has heart damage, the Prednizone will make it worse and her heart will just give out.

My concern is this - if the echocardiogram shows heart damage, she can't stay on the Prednizone, but Prednizone is the only thing that has helped so far. Not sure what the treatment will be if she has heart disease. I suppose I need to ask the vet some more questions.

Why can't anything be cut and dry? There are so many iff's and inconclusive results. I just want to know what is wrong!

Update on Ava

Ava has been on Prednizone since Saturday, and I don't want to jinx myself, but I think it may be working. She seems to be a tad bit more peppy, and she is eating much more than she was. She is also drinking and peeing a lot, but I am told that is a typical side effect of Prednizone.

I am also taking a fellow iggy-owner's advice and putting Lanolin on her ears to keep them moist. Italian Greyhounds are prone to getting cracked ears in the cold and it's really hard for them to heal because the skin is so thin. So Lanolin is supposed to keep them from re-cracking every time she shakes her head, and therefore give them more time to heal.

She still doesn't let me hold her or pet her much, which kills me. She seems so scared and anxious all the time, and backs away from me or whines when I try to pet her. I know that is caused partly because she can sense my fear and nerves and partly because lately when I come near her it's because I need to put medicine on her ears or examine her to see if there is anything different going on. But I just wish she would realize that of all people in this world, she can trust ME.

She hasn't cuddled on my lap in, like, three months. That used to be her favorite spot in the world. I'm wanting my cuddle bug back! But as long as she is possibly getting better, that is all that matters.

Cute little feet!

She still loves to burrow!

Joe in Vegas, A Visit From Mom, & Drugs for Ava

Joe left for Las Vegas on Thursday afternoon. He and his boss went to a chiropractic conference at the MGM Grand. Even though I was sad to see him go (and even sadder I couldn't join him), I was hoping this would be a good time for him to relax and have some fun, but unfortunately, he woke up on Friday morning with a raging cold and has been fighting it ever since. He hasn't really been able to live it up as he would have liked.

The day he left, my mom called and told me that the woman she is dog-sitting for was coming home for the weekend because her grandmother had passed away. Mom needed a place to stay while the family had their time together. So, she came up here and stayed with me, which was great, especially because Ava has been going downhill again and it was hard for me to be all alone.

My poor little puppy. She has been going through such crap over the last few months and I really started to feel myself losing hope. I finally got in touch with the specialists I took her to, the ones who did all the tests, and they told me that her test results were inconclusive and they needed time to think about next steps.

Basically, all the vets were telling me that they had no idea what was going on with her and I needed to just wait until they could come up with other ideas to try. Well, I was sick and tired of just sitting around listening to Ava cry in pain and watching her lose weight and not eat. I started doing tons of research online and tapping all the resources I had in the Italian Greyhound world. As always, my iggy people rallied behind me and gave me some possible diagnosis. I heard things like Spotted Fever, Addison's Disease, Auto Immune Disease, and Lupus (this one especially seemed to fit with Ava's symptoms).

I called my vet yesterday morning and told him I wanted to come in so they could take more blood and test for all these possibilities. He agreed to see me and examined Ava again. He said he didn't think it was Addison's or Spotted Fever, but he would test for them just to rule them out. The blood tests would also be a good indicator of Lupus and Auto Immune. In the meantime, he decided to put Ava on Prednizone (a steroid). Prednizone is the treatment for about half of the possible illnesses Ava could have. Unfortunately, Prednizone will make the other half of the possibilities much worse. But in the vets words, "What have we go to lose?"

So, the best case scenario is that the Prednizone will actually make Ava better and once we get the test results back, we will see something that will indicate what she has. The other case is that she gets worse and we at least know that whatever she has is NOT one of the illnesses treated by Prednizone. Either way, at least I feel like I am doing something proactive and not just sitting here watching her die.

I'm still doing research and touching base with everyone I can. I just don't understand how I could possibly have two dogs in a row that have these crazy, rare, incurable/undiagnosable diseases! How fair is that??

Mom just left to head back to Annapolis and Joe should be back tonight around 6 p.m. It was really nice to have my mom here with me this weekend so I didn't have to be alone, but I'm really happy to have Joe back so our family can be together while we fight this.

Thanks again for all of your support and advice through this. I don't know what I would do without the love and support from my family and friends. :) Keep those good thoughts coming.

Long Day

Yesterday was a long day for Ava. And not only was it a bad day for her, but because her mom is such an idiot, it was also a long and horrible night the night before. I have been trying to find stuff to feed Ava that she will like, but will also be high calorie and fattening so she will gain some weight. I found this new dog food from Alpo that was chicken in gravy and I thought - perfect. WRONG. I should have known that would tear up her little system; it was waaaay too rich. So, she spent the night before her hospital visit with horrible diarrhea. I wonder what is wrong with me sometimes. I should know better. We are back to bland boiled chicken and scrambled eggs now.

Anyway, we left the house yesterday about 8:45 a.m. and headed up to Massachusetts. Her appointment was at 11:00 and we got there about a half hour early. The hospital at Tufts University is called the Foster Hospital for Small Animals, and the whole campus is actually very beautiful. Here is the front of the hospital:

We spent the first hour with another doctor, where I had to go over all her history again and explain again what exactly has been going on. Which was okay, since I wanted to make sure that all the vets there thought she probably had the same thing. And when I was done, the new vet said she agreed with the original diagnosis, that it was probably an immune-mediated issue.

She said she would take Ava, put a catheter in her leg and wait for the next available time to get her in for her tests. They had to sedate her for both tests - first to take fluid out of her front two knee joints and second to cut off a small section of her ear so they could do a biopsy.

I handed Ava over (I made them take her blanket so she would have something familiar) and then headed outside to wait. They said it could be five hours! I walked around for a while, and then found a park bench to just wait. I napped for a while (haven't been getting good sleep lately) and read a book.

Finally, they called - she was ready to come home.

We finally got out of there about 5:00 p.m. to head home. My poor baby girl was all bruised and swollen. Her ear was bleeding from the biopsy and her leg was swollen all around this lime green tape they had used to cover where they stuck the catheter. She was very happy to see me, though, and all too excited to get the hell out of there. She slept all the way home.

The doctors said I could take the tape off her leg when I got home, so I did that immediately. It was scaring me, how swollen it was, like the tape was cutting off circulation. You can see how swollen it is here:

And that was just from the catheter. Both front wrist joints are also swollen (but not as badly) from them taking fluid out.

Here is a picture of her ear. You can't really see it that well, but they cut just a little snip from the side to test. It's also all bruised behind her ear, not sure why that is.

We have to double our efforts of watching her now and making her wear the cone so she doesn't lick or scratch her new wounds. She is in more pain now, so I have to give her pain medication more often. I hate drugging her up, but she just sounds miserable.

Unfortunately, we won't get results back from the tests for 3-5 days. Another waiting game. Please just keep your fingers crossed that we will hear something conclusive. If they don't see something major in these tests, I have to drive back up later in the week for an ultrasound and echocardiogram.

On a light note, Jackson is the best dog EVER! Poor boy had to stay cooped up in the house for over 10 hours, and he didn't have one accident! And he was so excited to see us when we got home, but as soon as Ava walked in, he very calmly and sweetly went over to her and started sniffing her. It was like he knew she wasn't feeling well and he needed to be careful with her. He is seriously such a sweet dog.

Livin' It Up At The Mall

Joe had the pleasure of working a booth at the local mall this weekend. He will have to work Saturdays from now on. Normally, he will be seeing patients at the office, but occasionally he will be out in the community like this. Going forward he will get Thursdays and Sundays off, which he isn't that happy about, but he's dealing with it. The good news is that he got 6 new patients from his time manning the booth, and his boss was hoping for five!