Dermatology Diary Part 4: Meet Simba and Asia

Week 19 Progress Report

The Dogs: both dogs were itchy. Really itchy. It is hard to convey the magnitude of how itchy they were. When they get as bad as they were this week, they tend to sleep a lot, and we had a couple of pretty lethargic dogs on our hands. Although their skin looked better (especially Simba, who wasn't nearly as red and inflamed and was no longer breaking out in little sores), they would occasionally break out in big red blotches on their skin after a particularly bad scratching episode. Midway through this week the prednisone was finally stopped, and that only made things worse.

I was back to feeling helpless, and wondering what I was doing to these beautiful dogs. Was it something in our house? Was it dust? (If so they got the wrong family as housecleaning is not a priority here). Was it something we were feeding them? Was it our laundry detergent? The questions and the "what-ifs" drive you crazy after a while. I had to keep reminding myself that all the time and money (lots of money!) we had invested was part of the long-term process of figuring out what the problem is and how to best treat it. At least I could start counting down to the skin testing date, and know that we can treat them more effectively once that is done.

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