Dermatology Diary Part 6: Meet Simba and Asia

Week 32 -- Progress Report

I continued with the prednisone 2 days on, one day off as our recheck appointment was scheduled for the end of this week (along with vaccines for Asia). Though the dogs were reasonably stable, Asia was having a bit of redness on her belly and back end, and Simba's ear persisted in being quite itchy. I also noted the dogs had gained a lot of weight, which could have been attributed to prednisone, or perhaps just to me spoiling them with treats.

Dr. G. was not very pleased with their condition: not only did they still have quite severe signs despite the still-regular dosing with prednisone, they were starting to get quite heavy and looked pot-bellied, which can occur as a side effect of too much prednisone. It seemed that even trying to maintain them on low doses of prednisone was not going to be an option, because it seemed as soon as we try to decrease the prednisone dosage, their symptoms flared up quite badly again.

We decided it was time to get around to proceeding with the blood testing for allergies. However Dr. G. had to check with the lab for sample requirements, so we initially thought we'd take the samples in a couple of weeks, since I would be traveling out of town again. However, after consulting the lab we would be using, we had to rethink our plan yet again. The lab recommended that even with blood testing, getting them off prednisone, or at least to a much-reduced dose, would increase the chances of getting good results. The blood test measures the levels of antibodies to certain allergens, and the levels of those antibodies could be decreased by treatment with prednisone. So a new plan would have to be formulated to get the dogs on a lesser dose of prednisone to prepare for testing. It would have to wait until we returned from our trip, though.

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