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Canine Autoimmune Hemolytic Anemia (AIHA & IMHA) - ? for Rita, IA
| HI Rita, I was reading your post aboutt Neutrophils, and notciec your havea senior AIHA dog. I would like getting info, and perspective from another AIHA senior dog owner since there are few here. I just want to know what what you went thru since, I have have a senior dog Wylie (about 11 years old) also diagnosed in April. She is a 50# mix, aussie/gsd. What was Shebas PCV when first diagnosed and subsuquent treatment? My vet reduced Wylie off pred pretty fast her last pred was 7/1 and then in Nov she had a relapse, we dont know if its the heartworm she received a week prior or I now wonder about her getting off pred so soon. She is doing great her last PCV was 47 and gets rechecked next week. I am sorry I am rambling, but with her a senior I think what options do I pursue if her numbers were to go very low. We have been lucky and caught her illness both times and she was never below 27. Thanks Laurie |
| Laurie CA |
| Hi Laurie! Sorry for not replying earlier but I had to work today. It's great to hear that Wylie is doing well again and her PCV is 47 - that's fantastic! Here's our story (and I apologize for it being so long): Sheba was first diagnosed April 4, 2008. We had been out of town at a convention the last few days of March and my in-laws had come to stay with Sheba. They left before we got home so we only talked to them on the phone after we got back. They said she had been great and things had gone well. We noticed she seemed a little down but we put it off to our being gone - thought she was miffed and just letting us know. The next few days she seemed mostly okay - still a little down, we noticed her stools looked like pumpkin pie filling and her tongue seemed a little pale but she was eating more or less okay. It was when I took her for a walk Wednesday night (around 6:00 p.m.) that life went to hell. We didn't get any farther than the neighbor's driveway when she just collapsed. Sat down on the side of the road and looked at me like "What just happened?". I thought she was having a stroke or something and was terrified because I didn't know what to do and there was no way I was going to be able to pick her up and carry her back home. After a few minutes I was able to get her to stand up and walk back home. She seemed slightly dazed and refused to eat and I called the vet as soon as I got in the house. We live in a small town (26,000) so there are no emergency clinics. Fortunately our vet has always been very good at calling us back when he gets paged. I told him what happened and he told me to bring her in first thing in the morning. We woke up on Thursday at 5:15 a.m. to Sheba breathing very heavily - like she couldn't catch her breath. She was sitting facing the corner and she looked awful. We sat with her for a bit and then got ready - Mike for work and me for a trip to the vet/work. When I called Sheba down to load her in the car, she was very hesitant about coming downstairs (about 6 steps) and when she got to the bottom she collapsed again. Now I was really terrified! When we got to the vet Sheba either didn't want to or couldn't get out of the car (even with the ramp) so I went in and got one of Dr. Holm's assistants. She came out and had to carry Sheba in. She immediately took down all of the information about what had been happening and called Dr. H. (He wasn't scheduled to come in until a little later.) She asked me if I wanted to wait with Sheba or if I was going to leave her and he would call me. I'm not sure what made me decide to wait with her, but I chose to wait and boy am I glad! Dr. H started by physically examining Sheba and while he was feeling her abdomen she turned and bit him. We put her back down and she was so upset/nervous/anxious that she kept pacing. In the meantime my husband showed up (I'd called him when she collapsed the 2nd time) to see what was happening. As a result of all of her pacing, Sheba collapsed in the exam room. Dr. H. asked if that was what had been happening and when we replied yes - he said we really needed to see a specialist. He gave us the choice of Iowa State University or Des Moines and we picked ISU because it is 1/2 hour closer to home. He called down to make sure they were expecting us and we left. At ISU Sheba was wheeled in on a cart and immediately taken to an exam room. They did a quick exam and then took her back to ready her for tests. The hardest part for me came when they asked if we wanted them to try to revive her if something went wrong and she went into cardiac arrest. (I admit it - I totally lost it.) Some possibilities of what could be wrong were discussed and we left for a time while they ran their tests. When we came back they had determined it was AIHA and explained our treatment options. They also told us they needed to keep her while they started treament. They were up front about the disease, its treatment and the costs involved and survival rates. After we indicated we wanted to treat her she was immediately put on 50mg of pred, 12mg of aspirin and an antibiotic. We left for home devastated and scared. They called us twice daily with an update on her progress and starting on Saturday we went down to see her daily. (It was a 2 hour round trip but we didn't care. She was/is worth it!) I think it was Saturday night that they decided they needed to do a blood transfusion because they were concerned things were not going as well as they would like and her PCV had dropped to 17. They also started the Atopica (250mg daily) at the same time. After 6 very long days in their ICU we got to bring her home. She was extremely weak, had lost almost 8-10 lbs. (was approx. 54 lbs before, came home weighing 46 lbs.) and looked awful but she was home! That first night she ate a little and then promptly threw everything back up (including her medicine!). The next day I stayed home from work and just watched her sleep. The next several months involved regular blood tests, several additional trips to Ames for check ups and figuring out how to get her to swallow some of those whomping big pills without any fuss. (Soft food works wonders!) Trips to the groomers would result in Staph infections 2-3 days later and would then require treatment with more meds. Throughout the whole ordeal Sheba was a trooper and hung in there. We were able to stop the aspirin when we cut her dosage of pred in half and Sheba was weaned off pred entirely sometime in September. I can't remember when exactly because we kept expecting it to happen and it kept getting pushed back because they wanted to be sure her PCV was holding steady. When we were down to 125mg. of Atopica we called about the next reduction and some idiot resident at ISU told us we could totally stop giving it to her as she had been on meds for 6 months and they liked to wean dogs off of all their meds after this time period. After discussing it with our local vet we decided to more gradually wean her off of the Atopica. We finally just finished that up approx 2 weeks ago. Other than this unfortunate business with the weird WBC count, Sheba is doing pretty well. Her PCV has been holding steady at 42, her appetite is back to normal (in other words we want to eat anything but our own food), her weight is back up (higher than I would like at 55 lbs. but hey - she's here!) and she's back to being her queenly self. (My mom refers to her as the Grand Dame.) We do continue to give Sheba a heartworm tablet every month (and did even while we were treating her for AIHA) and apply flea/tick preventative throughout the summer months. She also takes a fish oil supplement daily. She has some other health issues related to her age including arthritis (we're going to start trying some supplements) and her kidneys aren't functioning quite as well as they could be so we're switching our diet to help with that little issue. Since we got her 2 1/2 years ago (she's a rescue) we've also had several fatty tumors removed, a growth on our right eyelid removed and a fibrosarcoma on our left shoulder removed (November 2007 in fact). When she was diagnosed with this lovely disease we were angry and devastated. Then it occurred to us that if we hadn't rescued Sheba and been willing to give her a chance each time something new came up - she probably wouldn't still be here on planet Earth enjoying her golden years, spoiled silly. So while it's been a LONG 8-9 months, we'd do it again. And if she relapses, we'll fight on as long as she wants to. She's worth it! If you want to know anything else (in case I left anything out - ha ha) or just want to visit - feel free to email me. Rita. Mike and Sheba |
| Rita IA |
| Rita, bless your heart for rescuing a senior dog. thanks for sharing your story, helps to see if I even need more aggressive treatment for Wylie and hope that never will happen. Wylie also became lethargic right in the middle of a walk and I knew somehting wasnt right since even at her age she is the energizer bunny, got her in to the vet and her pcv was 37, My vet mentioned AIHA but wanted to wait 3 more days and bring her back, I did she was down to 34 so he started pred and doxy, had a positive coombs test and a full tick panel which came bakc positive for RMSP but not high titer so he didnt that was the cause. he then sent our her blood work to an independent lab that came back in teh in 20s, he was ready to tranfuse if she contrinued to drop. Well the lab was 10 points off his and he said they did the blood one and when he does that one instead of the spin there is always at least a 6 point difference and she believes in the spin one. I am anal about my dogs care so I got a 2nd opinion from our only internest in town and she said do an ultrasound, at that age, AIHA is almost always caused by cancer usually of the spleen. Had that done and sure enough there was a growth on her spleen, we did a fast reduction of pred over the next 10 days as they didnt want to do surgery with her on it and she came thru with fantastic, I picked her up the next day and you would never know she had major surgery. The tumor was benign, great news since 60% of them are cancerous. This was May 9, by June her level was 42 so she was weaned off pred by 7/1. (too fast I think now) Fast forward to 11/1, we are on our walk she just stopped, I thought we were going to have to carry her back and told my husband, shes had a relapse. I got her in as soon as the vet opened, he said naa, he never had a dog relapse, but the test showed other wise, her PCV was 27, lower than the onset. She was started on 20 mg pred every day along with 50 mg azi, which she was only on a month. She was on the 20 mg pred for 45 days and has been on 20 mg every other day for 30 days. She is also taking pet tinic, pancreazymes, milk thistle, vitamin e, and bioprep. I find and learn something new almost every time I read, I dont know what neutrophils are and will now find out what Wylies readings have beenwhen she goes next week. I also have a 12 year old lab who is fully of fatty tumors, and had one removed off of his eye last January, luckily the others have caused no pain or difficulty. I saw your post post about arthritis and am going to check out that for Jake as one of his legs is becoming lame and he goes in to have that checked out, I currently have him on Synflex. THanks so much Laurie |
| Laurie CA |
This thread was discussed between 03/01/2009 and 04/01/2009
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