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Canine Autoimmune Hemolytic Anemia (AIHA & IMHA) - Ethel off meds
| January 1st, our Lhasa Ethel completed her IMHA medication. After starting out on 20mg prednisone and 25mg azathioprine every day, she had come down to 5mg prednisone every other day, discontinued Dec 1st, and 25mg azathoprine every other day, last dose Dec 30th. Her hematocrit level has come up to 46 two days ago, from a low of 12 during her IMHA crisis. Ethel now has a lot of energy, plays vigorously, and has come up to 24 pounds in body weight from a low of 19 pounds. The last week or so she has had recurring intermittent nausea occasionally accompanied by shaking/tremors and usually with a loud grumbling in her stomach. We have continued to give her 5mg famotidine with most meals and it seems to help somewhat. Her internal medicine specialist suspects a recently-developed food sensitivity and has advised us to change out her food, which we find difficult after having spent so much time to find and settle on a gluten-free food with quality ingredients, but it seems one really has to keep on top of these things. Ethel has regained significant muscle mass and plays rough with her sister Lucy again. We continue to give her digestive enzymes with each meal and will do so at least until she has been off the azathioprine a few months. |
| Brian Vermont |
| Brian, this may not be related to what's going on with Ethel, but I, too, had to change my Newfie's diet once she survived IMHA. I put her on a grain free diet some years ago, but now she's on a fish/potato only diet. She's allergic to beef, of all things. Is this related to the hemolytic event she survived? I don't know. She's been taking Atopica and cephalexin for several months now to help her deal with allergies she didn't seem to have before the IMHA. |
| Ruth Aptos |
| that is great news for Ethel, We all love hearing about our friends who have been able to get off the meds. Laurie |
| Laurie CA |
| Interesting, we had to change Ethel's diet a couple years before she came down with IMHA. She had been on Science Diet and developed terrible G-I symptoms (bloody stool, vomiting, etc). The vet had us put her on Prescription Diet I/D, which we used for more than a year, but she got ill again every time we tried to return to her previous food. After trying a lot of different foods, we are convinced she has gluten intolerance, gluten sensitivity, or just straight up Celiac. Switching to Canidae helped, and gave us a lot of comfort during the melamine debacle, but we need to re-consider things again if Ethel needs us to. Her stomach problems still seem due to stress to us. Both my wife and I have had bad colds and have been sleeping late the last two weeks and it has thrown Ethel off. I think she really needs to eat on her schedule. Her stomach issues rarely arise after feeding, it's much more common for her to feel bad first thing in the morning now. She knows when she doesn't feel well and will sit on our feet and not allow us to get too far away from her. The famotidine seems to help quite a bit when she gets this way, though now that she is off pred and aza she spends more time picking through her food to make sure we haven't slipped any pills in for her. I do think it is different from straight-up nausea. When she was on the pred and it made her nauseous, homeopathic Nux vomica 30C would make her feel better in under a minute. With what she has been getting now, the Nux doesn't help one bit. Not that that gives any diagnostic info to the vet, they look at us like we grew another head if we discuss adding herbs like oregano or milk thistle to their food, so we don't even mention the homeopathy... Another odd thing Ethel has done recently is to start attempting to drink water from the tray underneath a large potted plant, even while having plenty of fresh water available. We think she picked this up from her sister, because Lucy was the one we saw doing it first. Lucy likes to wander the garden and chew and lick on every plant she finds, so I think she is craving some missing trace elements she can't get while we have snow covering everything outside. Ethel likes to run outside but isn't really interested in the plants like Lucy is (other than the cherry tomatoes she gets to munch on). |
| Brian Vermont |
This thread was discussed between 02/01/2009 and 09/01/2009
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