The Derm Diary series of articles was authored by Lianne McLeod DVM, who was the About.com Guide to Exotic Pets for 11 years.
Dermatology Diary Table of contents
Dermatology Photo Gallery
Derm Diary "chapters"
Part 1 |
Part 2 |
Part 3 |
Part 4 |
Part 5 |
Part 6 |
Part 7 |
Part 8 |
Weeks 40 and 41 -- Progress Reports
Week 40
Simba's skin was definitely worse, and he had broken out in sores and had a nasty red oozing patch on his neck. I had some antibiotics on hand, and started Simba on antibiotics. Fortunately, most of the sores cleared up very quickly, except for some persistent red (and very itchy) patches on the back of his neck. Even though Simba was having some fairly distressing symptoms, I cut the prednisone down to ¼ of a 50 mg tablet every other day.
Week 41
I decided I needed to economize a bit on the dogs as the food bills were just a bit too much on top of everything else, and the upcoming testing would also be expensive. I gradually switched over to Nutrience Holistic Duck and Potato (after much debate and label reading, particularly after all the recalls previously this Spring). I also got an Omega 3-6-9 fatty acid supplement containing fish oil, to increase the amount essential fatty acids they were getting (the new food had a decent fatty acid content but not as high as the Hill's d/d). Simba responded well to the antibiotics, but was definitely losing a lot of hair -- it was clear his hair loss was returning with a vengeance. He was also pretty itchy. Asia was doing quite well though; I even began thinking maybe I could get her off the prednisone. I figured Simba was at least stable for now, so I decided to bite the bullet and decrease the prednisone to every three days.
