Bethany
05-16-2012, 10:18 PM
Hi,
Our dog Indy was just diagnosed with Cushings yesterday, and it’s been a long, grueling haul up to this point. Things are so bad to begin with that I’m not sure at all how he is responding to his first day of Lysodren treatment. Here is some background:
Indy is an 8 year-old weimaraner, up until this point very active and always hungry. Last year, his weight started to balloon. He’d always been a big eater, and he was less regularly active due to our work schedules at the time, so I wasn’t terribly concerned about the weight gain at first. Last fall, I started noticing several lipomas on his back and small circular patches of hair loss, dandruff, and irregular shedding along with the weight gain. After researching lipomas and coat problems, we switched to a raw diet and started that January 1st of this year. I thought he might be hypothyroid based on his symptoms, so I started using a whole food supplement called BioPreparation to address that (we use the human version of this supplement ourselves, and it is truly amazing). Between the raw diet and the BioPreparation, the change was great! Indy looked like he was losing weight, all but one of his lipomas dissolved naturally, and his coat was much softer (although the hair wasn’t growing back in the spots where it went bald to begin with). His energy level was almost puppy-like and we were convinced we were getting our old dog back. At this point, I hadn’t even heard of Cushings.
In April, Indy seemed a little more lethargic than usual. I also noticed that his head felt bonier and looked different (his occipital bone had never been visible at all, but now it’s quite prominent). Within a day or so of the initial lethargy, Indy started having tremors and acting disoriented when he woke up from naps; he was bumping into things like his depth perception was off. He also had one very slight seizure the night the disorientation started (a couple of repetitive head shakes, no loss of consciousness). We took him to the vet, and they ran his blood work. Everything was normal except that his liver enzymes and BUN levels were way up and his WBC was extremely low. The vet x-rayed his abdomen also. Everything looked normal except for his enlarged and rounded-looking liver. He had an ultrasound 2 days later that revealed no tumors or abnormal growths in any of his organs including the liver; the liver was just lighter in color than it should have been and enlarged/rounded.
They put him on Doxycycline to treat a possible infection, but he vomited it up no matter how I tried to dose it, and they advised we stop after 2 days of bad results. He also had several more significant seizures after starting the Doxy. The Doxy killed his appetite too, and he became very suspicious of food for the first time in his life. They suggested Lyme disease and tick-borne illness testing, which came back negative. We also ran fungal testing, which came back negative. The vet’s best guess was lymphoma that had spread to his brain/spinal cord or Cushings, but Cushings was lower on her list than lymphoma--all of this based solely on the ultrasound and symptoms. I did not allow a biopsy of his liver during the ultrasound because he seemed like he was at death’s door to begin with, and the biopsy required anesthesia. I didn’t trust that vet enough to put him under successfully in a delicate state. After the ultrasound, they recommended I see a neurological specialist out-of-town or take him home and wait for nature to run its course.
I then got a second opinion from a holistic vet, who asked if Indy’s thyroid level had been tested. It hadn’t. The first vet told me that thyroid issues, if they existed, were secondary to whatever was going on in the liver and brain. From what I’ve read, the endocrine system is pretty central to what goes on elsewhere in the body, so I wanted the thyroid tested anyway. It was also extremely low. The holistic vet guessed that the low WBC was based on something autoimmune, rather than an actual infection. He started Indy on NatureThroid 2x daily on April 26. We also had him on 3 caps daily of Thorne Hepagen C for liver support and a B vitamin complex 2x daily for an extra initial boost. I also kept him on a lower dose of his BioPrep because it seemed to help with his disorientation and tremors. He snapped right out of his mental fog and was back to himself for about a week.
Then the disorientation came back with a vengeance (this was the week of the full moon, which can cause increased seizure activity). Every time he fell asleep, he’d suddenly twitch and wake himself up. He didn’t have any other full-blown seizures, but we took him back in to the holistic vet. I wondered if his thyroid dose was too high, but he said Indy’s original numbers were so low that nothing short of eating an entire bottle of thyroid meds at once would bring him up too high. I had also noticed that Indy was peeing for longer amounts of time than usual, and based on that and the frantic circling and whining, the vet decided to do an ACTH stim. The vet was out of the hormone needed, so we had to wait two days for it to arrive, and he prescribed Indy an anti-anxiety med (SedaPlus) in the meantime to help him get some rest and stop pacing so much until we got him tested. It worked great for the first two days, but then his appetite decreased again and he seemed to be even more disoriented than before. He started circling constantly and frantically, and also getting stuck in corners and head pressing any time he was awake. He wouldn’t eat full meals, so he wasn’t getting full doses of his other medicines. We had to stay outside with him for hours at a time this week because he just hurts himself constantly by bumping into things inside the house.
The ACTH stim came back positive this Monday. Based on the worsening neurological issues, the holistic vet also advised that we see a neurological specialist. He didn’t see any problem with starting treatment for Cushings, so he prescribed us Lysodren. I gave Indy one Tuesday morning (500mg), and it was quite a battle to get it down. I had to cut it up and put it into chopped hot dog pieces (his favorite treat), which has been the only way I can get some of his pills into his system. He didn’t even finish the entire tablet. I didn’t notice an immediate difference; he was still pacing and circling, but he was obviously weaker than yesterday because he hasn’t eaten a real meal for days now. He also hasn’t had a drop of water to drink on his own (but that started before the Lysodren). I have been squirting drops of water and BioPrep into his mouth every few hours because the BioPrep is the only thing that seems to reduce his tremors a bit. It’s also supposed to stimulate the appetite because it’s algae-based, but he still isn’t interested in food at all. Sometimes he smells it and seems interested, but he acts like he has forgotten how to eat.
Quite frankly, I’m at my wit’s end. Indy is exhausted and miserable. The vet told us to stop the Lysodren for at least two days to see if Indy perked back up, and if so, to give him a half dosage when he seemed like he could handle it. We’ve been getting about 2 hours of sleep a night and the days are exhausting as well—he really can’t be left unattended for any amount of time at all now. It is beyond heartbreaking to deal with this, and there is a good possibility I am pregnant as well, so I need my sleep, and this stress has been overwhelming for me and my husband too. Not to mention, the Lysodren is a major pregnancy hazard, and I didn’t realize it could be absorbed through the skin when I touched it the other morning.
I guess my next step is to decide whether or not to go to the specialist (2 hour drive), but both vets we’ve seen now have mentioned the possibility of a brain tumor or cancer, which we can’t afford to treat. I don’t want to put Indy through chemo if it is cancer anyway. I also don’t want to stress him out even more just to get bad news that I can do nothing about. I’m really feeling like the only thing I can do is love him until it’s his time to go, but I’d love to know if any of this sounds familiar to others or if anyone has any insights about what other options we have.
Our dog Indy was just diagnosed with Cushings yesterday, and it’s been a long, grueling haul up to this point. Things are so bad to begin with that I’m not sure at all how he is responding to his first day of Lysodren treatment. Here is some background:
Indy is an 8 year-old weimaraner, up until this point very active and always hungry. Last year, his weight started to balloon. He’d always been a big eater, and he was less regularly active due to our work schedules at the time, so I wasn’t terribly concerned about the weight gain at first. Last fall, I started noticing several lipomas on his back and small circular patches of hair loss, dandruff, and irregular shedding along with the weight gain. After researching lipomas and coat problems, we switched to a raw diet and started that January 1st of this year. I thought he might be hypothyroid based on his symptoms, so I started using a whole food supplement called BioPreparation to address that (we use the human version of this supplement ourselves, and it is truly amazing). Between the raw diet and the BioPreparation, the change was great! Indy looked like he was losing weight, all but one of his lipomas dissolved naturally, and his coat was much softer (although the hair wasn’t growing back in the spots where it went bald to begin with). His energy level was almost puppy-like and we were convinced we were getting our old dog back. At this point, I hadn’t even heard of Cushings.
In April, Indy seemed a little more lethargic than usual. I also noticed that his head felt bonier and looked different (his occipital bone had never been visible at all, but now it’s quite prominent). Within a day or so of the initial lethargy, Indy started having tremors and acting disoriented when he woke up from naps; he was bumping into things like his depth perception was off. He also had one very slight seizure the night the disorientation started (a couple of repetitive head shakes, no loss of consciousness). We took him to the vet, and they ran his blood work. Everything was normal except that his liver enzymes and BUN levels were way up and his WBC was extremely low. The vet x-rayed his abdomen also. Everything looked normal except for his enlarged and rounded-looking liver. He had an ultrasound 2 days later that revealed no tumors or abnormal growths in any of his organs including the liver; the liver was just lighter in color than it should have been and enlarged/rounded.
They put him on Doxycycline to treat a possible infection, but he vomited it up no matter how I tried to dose it, and they advised we stop after 2 days of bad results. He also had several more significant seizures after starting the Doxy. The Doxy killed his appetite too, and he became very suspicious of food for the first time in his life. They suggested Lyme disease and tick-borne illness testing, which came back negative. We also ran fungal testing, which came back negative. The vet’s best guess was lymphoma that had spread to his brain/spinal cord or Cushings, but Cushings was lower on her list than lymphoma--all of this based solely on the ultrasound and symptoms. I did not allow a biopsy of his liver during the ultrasound because he seemed like he was at death’s door to begin with, and the biopsy required anesthesia. I didn’t trust that vet enough to put him under successfully in a delicate state. After the ultrasound, they recommended I see a neurological specialist out-of-town or take him home and wait for nature to run its course.
I then got a second opinion from a holistic vet, who asked if Indy’s thyroid level had been tested. It hadn’t. The first vet told me that thyroid issues, if they existed, were secondary to whatever was going on in the liver and brain. From what I’ve read, the endocrine system is pretty central to what goes on elsewhere in the body, so I wanted the thyroid tested anyway. It was also extremely low. The holistic vet guessed that the low WBC was based on something autoimmune, rather than an actual infection. He started Indy on NatureThroid 2x daily on April 26. We also had him on 3 caps daily of Thorne Hepagen C for liver support and a B vitamin complex 2x daily for an extra initial boost. I also kept him on a lower dose of his BioPrep because it seemed to help with his disorientation and tremors. He snapped right out of his mental fog and was back to himself for about a week.
Then the disorientation came back with a vengeance (this was the week of the full moon, which can cause increased seizure activity). Every time he fell asleep, he’d suddenly twitch and wake himself up. He didn’t have any other full-blown seizures, but we took him back in to the holistic vet. I wondered if his thyroid dose was too high, but he said Indy’s original numbers were so low that nothing short of eating an entire bottle of thyroid meds at once would bring him up too high. I had also noticed that Indy was peeing for longer amounts of time than usual, and based on that and the frantic circling and whining, the vet decided to do an ACTH stim. The vet was out of the hormone needed, so we had to wait two days for it to arrive, and he prescribed Indy an anti-anxiety med (SedaPlus) in the meantime to help him get some rest and stop pacing so much until we got him tested. It worked great for the first two days, but then his appetite decreased again and he seemed to be even more disoriented than before. He started circling constantly and frantically, and also getting stuck in corners and head pressing any time he was awake. He wouldn’t eat full meals, so he wasn’t getting full doses of his other medicines. We had to stay outside with him for hours at a time this week because he just hurts himself constantly by bumping into things inside the house.
The ACTH stim came back positive this Monday. Based on the worsening neurological issues, the holistic vet also advised that we see a neurological specialist. He didn’t see any problem with starting treatment for Cushings, so he prescribed us Lysodren. I gave Indy one Tuesday morning (500mg), and it was quite a battle to get it down. I had to cut it up and put it into chopped hot dog pieces (his favorite treat), which has been the only way I can get some of his pills into his system. He didn’t even finish the entire tablet. I didn’t notice an immediate difference; he was still pacing and circling, but he was obviously weaker than yesterday because he hasn’t eaten a real meal for days now. He also hasn’t had a drop of water to drink on his own (but that started before the Lysodren). I have been squirting drops of water and BioPrep into his mouth every few hours because the BioPrep is the only thing that seems to reduce his tremors a bit. It’s also supposed to stimulate the appetite because it’s algae-based, but he still isn’t interested in food at all. Sometimes he smells it and seems interested, but he acts like he has forgotten how to eat.
Quite frankly, I’m at my wit’s end. Indy is exhausted and miserable. The vet told us to stop the Lysodren for at least two days to see if Indy perked back up, and if so, to give him a half dosage when he seemed like he could handle it. We’ve been getting about 2 hours of sleep a night and the days are exhausting as well—he really can’t be left unattended for any amount of time at all now. It is beyond heartbreaking to deal with this, and there is a good possibility I am pregnant as well, so I need my sleep, and this stress has been overwhelming for me and my husband too. Not to mention, the Lysodren is a major pregnancy hazard, and I didn’t realize it could be absorbed through the skin when I touched it the other morning.
I guess my next step is to decide whether or not to go to the specialist (2 hour drive), but both vets we’ve seen now have mentioned the possibility of a brain tumor or cancer, which we can’t afford to treat. I don’t want to put Indy through chemo if it is cancer anyway. I also don’t want to stress him out even more just to get bad news that I can do nothing about. I’m really feeling like the only thing I can do is love him until it’s his time to go, but I’d love to know if any of this sounds familiar to others or if anyone has any insights about what other options we have.