First - almost everyone thought she was adorable. I forewarned them about her being fresh and everyone was respectful.
Dr. B was great, as was her tech - Tara. It was assumed that the skin issue is either sarcoptic mange(more likely) or Cushings disease(yuck). For that we got a prescription medicated shampoo and a few doses of Revolution to kill the mites. Hope was amazingly calm during most of the exam, other than trying to look at her teeth. Ironic, considering she likes to flash them as much as she does. Her teeth look pretty good and we don't think she is a senior but rather around 7-8 years old. Dr. B did a swab of Hope's ears to see what the chunky gross stuff was that smelled like yeast. Big surprise - yeast! We got a script for ear wash and medicated drops for those.
And drum roll... Hope weighed 5.1lbs!!! We gained! You can still count her ribs but we're going to get there.
Dr. B also aspirated what we're affectionately calling "Hope's meatball" aka mammary tumor. She and Dr C, another GP doctor, felt the margins were pretty clear and removing it should not be a problem. If and when she is under we can have a teeth cleaning done at the same time as long as she isn't having a problem under anesthesia. They did a quick peek under the microscope to see if it was mast cell - it wasn't - but saw something that concerned them and asked the onco doctor to look. He advised it should be sent in to be sure. No answers there.
Tara and I trimmed some more mats and then clipped her nails. There was a dew claw that was a DOOZY. Wow, it was long. Hope wasn't very cooperative for this portion of the visit but thankfully she trusts me more and more so her opinion of me didn't waiver even though I had to squish her head multiple times when she was being fresh. We also drew blood, for which we opted to muzzle her. She was fairly well behaved after some mild gremlin noises. Her poor little body is so fragile she bruised from her aspiration and blood draw. It really amazes me how fragile these little bodies are.
So the basics of the general exam were the itching will get worse before it gets better as the mites die. The ears will clear up with meds and time(mites in those too). 5 prescriptions for the little hot mess.
We then saw Dr Ringle - what an amazing doctor. He was very gentle with her. We opted to muzzle her here, too, but there was nothing really invasive and she was extremely well behaved for this. He said there was no need to really do extensive testing because he could tell she had little to no tear production, no eye infection, and lots of corneal scarring. Basically, she is mostly blind. Sigh. She'll need to be on medication for her eyes for life - artificial tears and cyclosporine.
So the rundown is:
Cyclosporine eye drops - three times a day
Artificial Tears - as often as possible, at least 15 minutes outside of the other eye drops
Revolution - one every two weeks starting on the 26th
Epi-Otic - clean ears twice a day
Mometamaxx - 6-8 drops in both ears twice a day at least 30 minutes after cleaning
Welactin Fish Oil - double down for dose while she gets fixed up
Cephalexin Suspension - 2 mls twice a day, with food
KetoChlor shampoo - 1-2 times a week
We talked about adding a steroid/anti-itch type pill once her bloodwork is back. This might become my second - or third - job. We'll wait to hear on the blood results and her heartworm test, most likely tomorrow.
Onward - cute shots from bath time tonight! You can see her meatball pretty good here.
As one can imagine, this all isn't cheap, but her little personality is really coming through now and it is so worth it.
Still waiting on our B-Naturals.com order. Once it gets here we're going to start the detox and then the real fun begins!
You are doing an amazing thing for this dog. No matter what, she will have known love and tenderness now, thanks to you.
ReplyDeletethank you, leah. she is bringing us a lot of joy.
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