Cushings due to a Prednisone Dose

[Kitkat187]

Hello. My dog Sammie has been diagnosed with autoimmune disease. She had an attack last fall, and recovered nicely. This Spring she had an attack but instead of her red cells being attacked, her platelets were in danger. We almost lost her. She was pumped full of medications and again recovered nicely, but not without bad reactions to atopica. It was awful. After she stopped taking that and was only on prednisone she got better, but then she started to have a minor relapse with her red cells being attacked. Not horrible blood results but enough to make my vet concerned given her history. So of course she is heavily dosed on prednisone. It's been about two months since this started and in the last month she has lost all strength in her hind legs. She's very lethargic also. She has basically developed cushings from being on the prednisone for a long period. She is reluctant to do stairs, can't get on couch, can't get in car.... Slow on getting up. Once she is up she is ok, but has fallen a few times here and there. A week ago her doctor reduced her pred from 30mg a day to 20mg. We don't do another CBC for about another week. I haven't seen much improvement yet with her. I realize we have to take her down slowly, but I'm impatient seeing how she is just wasting away right in front of me.

My main question is, for anyone that may have experienced something similar, did your dog regain muscle strength once the steroids were tapered? And how long did it take? I miss my girl. She's always lazy and tired. Never real excited. And it's hard to watch her not be able to get around as well as she did two short months ago.

FYI she's a 9 year old border collie mix - about 40 pounds.

[labblab]

Welcome to you and Sammie, but I am so sorry for her serious problems that have brought you to us. Obviously, the blood disorder must take the first priority in terms of treatment, but hopefully she can be successfully weaned off the prednisone and perhaps treated with some other immunsuppressive medication should the need arise again.

The short answer to your question is yes, once the prednisone has been discontinued, you should see improvement in the side effects that the steroid has caused. Things like muscle wasting will not resolve overnight -- it took a while to get to where you are now, and it will take a while to recover :o. But the problems caused by the prednisone should ultimately go away.

You are wise to understand, though, that the prednisone must be weaned down carefully. After being on a high dose for an extended period of time, Sammie's own adrenal glands may not be immediately capable of kicking back in and producing enough cortisol to replace the prednisone that is being discontinued. So it will indeed take some time to make the transition.

Please keep us updated as to how Sammie is doing, both with her blood counts and also with her prednisone taper. I know this has to have been a scary several months for you, and that you won't breathe totally easy until she's both off the prednisone and also stable with her blood. So we will be anxious to hear how you both are doing!

Marianne

[Kitkat187]

Thank you so much. It is never easy to watch our pups not feel well, especially when everything happened so fast.

[molly muffin]

Hi and welcome to the forum.

So what is the current plan for Sammie? Do they have a decrease in prednisone plan?

How is her autoimmune disorder doing?

[Kitkat187]

Yes, we go back to see our vet and have a CBC done a week from tomorrow. The hope is that her tests are good enough to drop another 10mg. This will leave her on 10mg a day, plus an every other day dose of immuran. Immuran may be a permanent part of her life, but I don't think the side effects are like prednisone. Today, she is having an okay day. She WANTS to be part of what's going on, but you can tell she just feels weak. If I go upstairs she will wait just to make sure I'm staying there for a while before she makes the hike up. Our 30 min walk this morning was good too. Nice energy but just not herself. She's a border collie! She's supposed to be crazy! Lol.

The last CBC we had 2 weeks ago was okay. But they wanted to see her red count a little better. It's very frustrating.

[molly muffin]

Hoping that every day she continues to improve and that the test next week reflect that. Let us know!