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Week 14 Progress Report
The frustration with all of this kicked into high gear this week.
We still had the dogs on a low dose of prednisone along with the cyclosporine, and they were not doing terribly well. They were not at their worst, but considering the medication we expected they would have been doing better -- much better. During this week, Asia held fairly steady. She was itchy, and her skin was red (especially in her flank region, though her face got pretty red around her eyes, too). However, Simba only got worse over the course of the week. His belly became very red and inflamed again. In frustration, I even increased their prednisone a bit toward the end of this week, knowing I had a couple of weeks to wean them off again. The end of this week marked the end of the first two week of cyclosporine and the results were very disappointing, to say the least.
On a funny note, I had to refill my cyclosporine as we just got two weeks worth at a time, and even the pharmacists were disappointed to hear that the dogs were not doing well. The entire pharmacy staff had been quite fascinated by their story!
A couple of days into this week we visited Dr. G. again. She was also disappointed to see how poorly they had responded (and she didn't even see Simba at his worst). She checked their skin for the presence of bacteria and yeast with a series of scrapings and impression smears, and there didn't seem to be any significant infection. At this point she wondered if they were going to be among the few dogs who don't respond well to cyclosporine, but she wanted them to stick it out for a couple of more weeks. She did still recommend continuing the prednisone for a bit, gradually weaning them off again, to give them some relief until we could determine if the cyclosporine would start working for them. If they don't respond, we just have to hope we can find an antihistamine that works. If not, it will be a difficult winter until the intradermal testing appointment.
Perhaps one of the most confusing things about all this was how synchronous the two dogs were in all of this. Though their symptoms were never quite the same, and at times one might seem slightly worse than the other, it was really remarkable how much their symptoms tended to worsen or improve in parallel. It would be unusual to have two allergic dogs follow such a similar course, or be allergic to the same things (if that turns out to be the case). It is puzzling, and frustrating, and it seemed like that fact that both react at the same time seems like a key to the puzzle, but we just weren't sure where it all fit together.
