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Week 20 Progress Report
The Dogs: the dogs continued to be terribly itchy. For Simba, the redness had settled down a bit, at least off and on. He'd have days where his skin didn't look as bad as it had been recently, but he was as itchy as I had ever seen him, all day, every day. He'd spend a great deal of time rubbing his face and belly on the ground, or standing and scratching his flanks. It was awful. A few evenings, his skin did get terribly red and irritated, Ironically, his ears looked wonderful! Asia, on the other hand, looked as bad as she ever had - her skin had red streaks and looked bruised appearance from all the scratching she was doing around her neck and chest. Her belly and rear end were red and raw from her licking. The end of this week marked one week of being completely off prednisone, and it was a nightmare. The dogs were spending most of their day sleeping, and when they were awake they were mostly scratching (at least that is how it seemed). I had decided I should take them to see Dr. G. rather than calling with an update so she could appreciate how awful things were again.
Vet Visit: as we were still 7 weeks away from our appointment for intradermal skin testing (in another province), Dr. G. decided to speak to the specialist for any ideas on what to do now. With such a bad response to other management besides prednisone, having to have them off prednisone completely for another 7 weeks seemed impossible. The out-of-town specialist confirmed her fears - if they don't respond at least reasonably well to other medical management in the weeks before doing intradermal testing, there is no point in proceeding. They need to be off prednisone for testing, but having already reactive, inflamed skin will also interfere with testing. He recommended going back to prednisone to help them feel better, check for a yeast infection in the skin, and try a relatively new Hill's Diet which had proved quite successful in some of his other cases. He also suggested that the diagnostic plan for our dogs might need to be changed to include blood testing rather than intradermal testing. Intradermal allergy testing is considered the best way to test, with the blood test results considered somewhat less reliable. However, the specialist said despite the fact that blood testing often doesn't quite correspond to the results of intradermal testing, desensitization based on the results of blood testing was nearly as successful as with treatment based on intradermal testing. Because the dogs didn't need to be off prednisone at all if we chose the route of blood testing, the specialist suggested this might be a more feasible way to deal with our dogs, since they don't respond as well to other kinds of medical management.
Dr. G. checked for yeast (which turned out negative), we special ordered some Hill's d/d Salmon and Potato, and got another prescription for prednisone. We also cancelled our referral appointment for intradermal testing. No road trip for the dogs!
In some ways, this was a bit of a setback but a relief. It was a frustrating week, and the thought of 7 more weeks of horribly red and itchy dogs was a nightmare, so knowing we had an alternate plan made me feel a bit less hopeless. While prednisone is not a great long term solution, for now it seemed to be the only thing that helped my poor dogs feel better.
