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Weeks 42 and 43 -- Progress Reports
Week 42
The first week on every three day prednisone went pretty well. It didn't seem to affect Asia too much, and Simba was a bit more pink and a bit more itchy, but not remarkably worse. So far so good.
Week 43
The middle of this week, Asia suddenly got much worse. Her skin, especially around her head and ears got intensely red and itchy. Simba was a bit worse, but this time it was Asia who had the major flare up. So much for doing better on less prednisone. I called Dr. G. Who was actually very surprised to hear I had them on such a low dose of prednisone. We decided it was time to do the blood testing so off we went to have their blood drawn. I elected to first have a screening done to make sure there were measurable levels of IgE antibodies (the kind of antibody involved in allergic responses) before we go with the full environmental screen. It would be a while before we had any results, and longer before we could do anything with them. We decided that we should let them have a higher dose of prednisone in the interim until we get the results, since they were both clearly not doing well on the lowered dose of prednisone. Their weight was getting very hard to control though, which was probably partly due to prednisone, so getting them off prednisone was still our foremost goal.
