Coffee heat rising

Pets

State of the Chaos

by

A little quieter here today… let’s hope it’s not the calm before the next storm. Let’s see how the various crises are doing:

1. In the department of Funny’s Money: I have no idea. I don’t even want to know, it’s such a chaotic disaster. This month I never got an untrammeled moment when I wasn’t too exhausted to sit down and work on the budget, so I’ve just been spending left and right. Financial manager sent over enough to cover the down payment on the pool rehab, which starts Monday. I reset the checking-to-emergency savings automatic transfer to move less than half of what I originally thought I could manage, so that (at least) will leave a little more basic survival money in checking.

2. Hand cancer: still waiting on the biopsy. But I’m calling the doc’s office on Monday to ask if we can accelerate the process. I want this damn thing OFF. Where they shaved off enough to send to the lab, it’s growing back with élan. Whatever it is, it’s very fast-growing and so presumably aggressive. And at times it really hurts. Hurts and itches. Turns out pain and itching are defining characteristics of squamous cell cancer. Why exactly we have to wait for biopsy results until the cows come home to cut the thing out escapes me.

3. Dog decedence*: No credible sign of croaking over yet! Matter of fact, this dog is getting much better. Just now she remembered the chicken jerky treats that reside in a jar on the kitchen counter and decided to do the Dance of the Manipulated Human, thereby eliciting a chew treat for herself and for Ruby. The cough seemed to come back a little: it had subsided to the point where she coughed only when she slurped up a lot of water (which she’s always done…corgis do that). She had stopped coughing when she barks and stopped coughing when I lifted her off the bed. So I cut back the Benadryl from 1/2 tab in the morning and 1/2 tab in the evening to just 1/2 tab at night. A-n-n-d…the cough started to come back. This morning I gave her a dose at doggy breakfast, and lo! No coughing.

*Yes, yes, I did invent that word. Why do you ask? Etym: Late Modern English, from decedent (a deceased person)

4. Car: It seems to have survived its brush with the flatbed trailer with no very serious damage. The gouged tire is still rolling. It hasn’t blown, at least not so far…and yeah, it has been on a freeway or two. I’m trying to stay off the freeways, because I don’t trust the thing. But to get out to the new dermatologist’s office sometime before the end of my life expectancy, I pretty much have to ride the 101 for a number of miles. So far, so good.

5. Cord-cutting Cox escape: Last night La Maya and La Bethulia invited me over for dinner. In the course of conversation, I remarked that I need to get rid of the fake “land line” (Cox’s new version is really VoIP, and not very good VoIP at that), replace my extensions with cheap clamshells and get an iPhone.

“I have two old iPhones that I’m not using!” says La Bethulia. “Want one?”

Do I want one???? Grab!  Well, she quite reasonably wanted to delete all her data on the thing before I trot it over to the Apple store to get it set up. And they’ve forgotten the password for the thing. But it turns out it’s not hard to reboot the thing all by your little self. So…I may try to do that with my son’s help, or just hire an Apple tech to do it. Paying someone a hundred bucks or so would be a lot cheaper than buying a new iPhone! 🙂

6. MacMail fiasco: Still not fixed. Right now the only way I can get to my email is through the Web interface, which is less than ideal. It does allow me to access incoming mail, but all my carefully designed preferences have been screwed up. Not erased — which would have been far preferable — but all jumbled around. So it’s a mess. And I guess I’m going to end up either having to pay Cox for an email account, the bastards, or start using Gmail, which I really really REALLY do not want to do. This, I will figure out later.

7. Other little dramas: Have yet to decide whether I’m going back to choir. The associate director has kindly put me on the women’s chant choir, which I love.  She urged me to come to choir on Sunday despite having turned on my heel and marched back to my car and gone home after last Wednesday evening’s unpleasant exchange at the door (not with her but with a woman who makes no secret of her dislike of me).

I don’t know. I’d pretty well decided to quit — just never go back, that’s how disgusted I am. And besides…

Really, the only thing that keeps me from feeling a great deal more serious about moving out of Crime Central is the choir. I can’t afford any other close-in district — this neighborhood is cheap because Conduit of Blight Blvd, Gangbanger’s Way, the Blightrail, the meth clinic, and the population of bums keep the property values way down. Comparable homes anywhere else are at least a hundred grand higher, and these days more like two hundred grand.

Abandoning the choir and the church would open two housing options: Fountain Hills, wayyy on the east side of the Valley, and Sun City, wayyyy on the west side. Both have the advantages of low crime rates and pretty decent nearby shopping. They’re both quiet and peaceful, and there’s no way any politicians and their greed-driven backers are going to build a boondoggle through the middle of either one. Sun City is a ghetto for old folks, which I really do not like. Fountain Hills is one helluva long way from everything but the Mayo Clinic, a distance that I also do not like. I don’t know anyone in Fountain Hills and, because I don’t make friends easily, this would make me feel isolated and unhappy. But Fountain Hills has pretty scenery and it is close to upscale shopping and to my favorite second-hand store, My Sister’s Closet. Sun City has the advantages that it’s very cheap to live there, and that I do know some people there and so would start with a kernel of a social life. Which would be good. I guess. And the writer’s group I favor meets way on the west side, so it would be easy to cultivate more friends there. I guess.

Well, if I’m going to snab that phone, I need to get up and do it now…La Maya’s relatives are about to descend on the house. And so, away!

Corgi LIVES…

by

Cassie the Corgi started to fall sick about the first of September. Migawd! It’s the 18th of October now…that poor little dog has been ailing for over a month and a half!

However…it looks like she may be on the mend. That is, if you assume that whatever is growing on her adrenal gland is benign.

Since it won’t do her or me any good to know what exactly that is — because of course I can’t afford thousands of dollars on surgery and cancer therapy for a 12-year-old dog — we are throwing the dice and betting on the come: that the thing is one of the 50% of such growths that are harmless.

She’s acting like that now. She finally has recovered from whatever ailed her and the horrific drugs that made her even sicker than the ailment did. Her cough is about gone except for when she drinks water…but she’s always choked on water, long as she’s been living here at the Funny Farm.

And this evening, for the first time in all these weeks, she’s been up for a beloved doggy-walk!

We didn’t try to go far — about a third of a mile, maybe — and she was looking a little tired by the time we got back. But it made her and Ruby the Corgi Pup very, very happy.

She’ll have to work back up to the traditional mile-long speed-walk. It may be that she’s a little too old for a fast stroll, but I’m pretty sure she’ll eventually get to where she can at least amble through our usual circuit.

Will she live a lot longer? In human years, I’d bet not. She is, after all, an elderly dog. At 12, a medium-sized dog has supposedly aged as much as a human ages in 69 years. But we don’t know she’s only 12. That’s what the Humane Society said was her age. But too often the staff at rescue shelters just make a guess at a dog’s age. When she came to live at the Funny Farm, she certainly didn’t act any younger than two. She could have been three. Ruby is around four, and I’d say she behaves very much like Cassie did ten years ago.

So…if Cassie was three then, she’s 13 now. If she was four then, she’s a very elderly 14 now. It’s hard to tell with a corgi: they’re vigorous, sturdy dogs, and Cassie was born before the breed was “noticed,” so is not overbred. If we cast our imagination to the outside border of this speculation and allow that she could even be 14, that would give her a human age of 78.

I’ll be happy if she lives another year or so and does so without undue suffering. And at the rate she’s going now…I don’t think that’s outside the realm of reason.

…and the Dust Settles

by

Après le déluge…yes, the dust does settle.

Today — Monday — nothing on the calendar. Thank God. With any luck, no lunacy will occur today.

Cassie the Corgi is getting a lot better. She was already throwing off the cough when Second Opinion Vet put her on doxycycline for the urinary tract infection MarvelVet opined was negligible. Whether the antibiotic is making a difference, I couldn’t say…except since she’s been on it, she’s improved markedly. This morning she endured being lifted off the bed without a coughing frenzy. It looks a great deal as though she’s going to recover and also as though the alleged adrenal tumor was something I didn’t want to know about. Or need to know about: at 12 years of age, this dog is going to pass on to her furry fathers pretty soon, and something has to spirit her away. If that’s the something, then that’s just the something, and there’s not much anyone can do about it.

Late last night, I remembered that you can polish grocery-cart scratches off your white car with one of those wall-scrubber sponge things. Duh! Why did I not think of that before? So I ran out to the garage and tested it, and lo! It did rub off some of the lesser “scratches,” which actually are paint from the flatbed. There are a couple of real-life gouges in the bumper’s paint, but most of it is not gouges but black stuff scraped ON to the finish, not scraped into it. It was dark out there last night, of course. Whenever I get my act together this morning, I’ll try this by light of day and an open garage door.

The car is running fine. Its bashed tire is not going flat.

Speaking of flat, I’m flat broke, budgetwise, and the economy, as predicted by a certain skeptic of your acquaintance, is about to go down the tubes. But what the heck…it’s not the first time. 😀

I still do not have a new AMEX card. Looks like the post office once again delivered the mail to Manny’s house: Manny and Josie live one street to the north. Stupidly, our streets bear the same name, and so postal workers and various service persons routinely go to the wrong address. And  Manny will NOT forward misdelivered mail! They just throw it in the garbage, far as I can tell.

So now presumably the garbage scavengers (of which we have a-plenty) have had access to my name, address, and a brand-new AMEX card. 😀 Today I have to call American Express and get them to send me a new one. Again. Meanwhile, I still have no credit card!

Nor do I have a card for my Medigap insurance. Today I’ll have to jump through that set of punch-a-button hoops, too. Together, those will absorb some time and create some more unwelcome aggravation. Oh well.

Speaking of unwelcome aggravation, the alleged squamous cell carcinoma is looking somewhat better today. I suspect Young Dr. Kildare’s pronouncement — that I have skin cancer, not ringworm — was yet another misdiagnosis. It takes about two weeks for the antifungal cream to kick in…and last Friday was the start of Week 2. It may be that not enough time had passed, by the time I saw YDK for the gunk to start to work. Last night I was NOT awakened at three in the morning with frantic itching and burning. And the lesion looks less inflamed than it did. In the “looks” department, I have to say it sure does look a lot more like images of tinea manum (ringworm on the hand) than like images of skin cancer. They are, in some ways, similar. But…well…we shall see.

In exploring the Hypochondriac’s Treasure Chest That Is the Internet, I learned that an outbreak of ringworm can be brought on by prolonged stress, which can weaken your immune system.

That would explain a lot, eh?

Coccidioides…the causative organism?

And speaking of aggravation, I remain convinced — nay, I’m more and more convinced — that MarvelVet misdiagnosed Cassie grievously — and possibly deliberately. I think this dog picked up whatever bug was going around, the one his staff told me at the outset she probably had and for which they originally prescribed the Temaril-P, which acts as a cough suppressant. I never did learn what that bug was…whether it was viral or bacterial. But its signal characteristic was a cough. Cassie may not have thrown it off as fast as expected because it either progressed to a bacterial infection or started as one.

She was slowly getting better by the time 2Ovet prescribed an antibiotic for what she says is about as bad a UTI as a dog can get. But two days on doxycycline and voilà! The cough has subsided to the point where she no longer hacks and wheezes when lifted off the bed and even sometimes can drink water without choking and wheezing. Doxycycline is a broad-spectrum antibiotic — meaning it acts on the two broad classes of bacteria, gram-positive and gram-negative.  What this means, if my speculation about the cough is correct, is that it would attack the cause of the cough (assuming it’s not viral) as well as the cause of the UTI.

There are some serious risks to broad-spectrum antibiotics. On the other hand, there’s a serious risk to pneumonia, too…

I wish I were not such a damn cynic…but I am. I cannot get past the suspicion that the “misdiagnosis” I sense was deliberate misdiagnosis. MarvelVet’s claim that Cassie’s UTI was negligible and did not need to be treated was just plain false. I saw the results; the numbers were as high as they get. The dog had a serious UTI, and that is why she was bleeding into her pee. He may have realized that treating her with an antibiotic likely would clear up the cough. And that would take me and my dog and my credit card out the door.

Valley fever is a huge profit center. The cost of treating the disease is bracing, and the treatment goes on for a minimum of six months but often for the remainder of the animal’s life…which can be years. One of my friends, who says she’s lost four dogs to Valley fever, said she was spending $300 a month on the drugs. MarvelVet has a link to a compounding pharmacy (a remark he made suggested he owns it or has an interest in it), and so he was giving me a month’s worth of pills for $40. But…either way…just think of that.

At $40 a month, that’s $480 a year. Just 10 doggy patients diagnosed with “Valley fever” — correctly or not — will bring you $4800 a year. But if you can get $300 a month, that’s $3600 per patient per year, or $36,000 a year if you can diagnose 10 dogs with it. Holy shit! That doesn’t even include the $500 he charged for the tests.

MarvelVet has a large, active practice — he is a very busy man, indeed. And one could argue that he’s so busy that of course he makes an occasional mistake with an off-the-cuff diagnosis.And you certainly could figure that 10 cases of Valley fever would be on the low end for that practice.

I’d like to believe this was a mistake. But…man! The money motive is there, in a big way.

As for the adrenal tumor? Well…the dog is 12 years old. She’s not going to get out of this world alive. She’s near the end of her breed’s average life span. It would be surprising if she didn’t have some life-threatening ailment.

Just now, though, she surely isn’t behaving as though her life was threatened. Half of adrenal gland growths are benign. So she does have a 50-50 chance of staying well. At least for awhile.

Comes the Deluge…

by

Wow! What a fantastic day!

It’s been raining since about 8:30 this morning. Temps in the 70s. Naturally, I’d put off driving up to 2nd Opinion Vet’s office to pick up the doxycycline she wants to inflict on poor old Cassie’s urinary tract infection. So I had to shoot up there under darkening skies. Darted in, grabbed the pills, ran back out, jumped in the car…and the skies opened!

Along came a downpour like the great old rainstorms we used to get back in the day, before Arizona was destroyed by development and too damn many people, parking lots, buildings, and machines. Yeah: the kind of rain where you can barely make out the road in front of you. 🙂

Without the fiberglass cover over the back porch, rain sluices right down onto the pavement, which tends to turn into a lake. But interestingly, despite a LOT of rainfall, water did not come up to the back doors’ threshholds. Apparently when the cover was there, it channeled so much water to the rocks off the back patio (submerged in this picture) that the French well and rock “river” couldn’t handle it. If the amount that fell today couldn’t flood that patio up to the level of the back door, presumably the back door and slider are pretty safe from water damage.

Got home without incident, mostly because there weren’t many people on the road early on a Saturday morning. It’s now 3:30 and the rain has just let up. The local play-nooz is reporting that October is now the 2nd wettest month on record (right! I’ll believe that when pigs fly). Whatever: the pool is now filled to the coping. Another few inches of rain and it will overflow. I probably need to open the valve on the filter to let some of that water out, but truth to tell, I have no idea what will happen when I do. So…discretion being the better part…

How do you like this little toadstool that popped up in the rain? Cute little guy, ain’t he?

Finished another two sections of the present client’s annual promotion & tenure paperwork. Ohhh dear God, am I ever glad not to be in the academy anymore! Crazy-making. And this woman: she’s like some sort of nuclear engine. A real powerhouse! When you look at what she’s been doing, you wonder when she has time to breathe at all, much less have a life.

Cassie is enjoying doggy moments when she seems MUCH better. This morning she was just about back to her old bright-eyed, yappy self. Never thought a dog’s barking would be a welcome sound! She does have her ups and downs, though. Right now she’s doping off on the bed again. The vet said the doxycycline could have some unpleasant side effects, but so far…so good. But of course, she’s only swallowed one of them.

She’s still unduly thirsty and still peeing gallons, but no longer on the floor. She can make it outside, and she doesn’t have to pee every 20 minutes. Thirst and frequent, copious urination are symptoms of Cushing’s disease — i.e., something wrong with the adrenal glands. BUT…they’re also side effects of Benadryl, with which I’ve been dosing her copiously. It seems to have helped the cough significantly, although the cough and wheeze have not gone completely away. And they’re side effects of prednisone, of which I suspect she was given too much. She’s much better…but lifting her off the bed presents a problem in the breathing department: the weight of her chest on my arms as I lift her down apparently sets off a coughing/wheezing spree. So…yeah…there’s something wrong there.

Coughing, though, seems not to be a sign of Cushing’s. We shall find out, sooner or later.

2nd Opinion Vet made a few remarks that were unwittingly revealing… She said that one of those ultrasound scans costs $450 to $500 — this was said in the context of her mild surprise when I said I couldn’t afford to spend vast amounts of money trying to keep a 12- or 13-year-old dog alive. When I told her that MarvelVet had comped the ultrasound, she was startled.

Now, he may have done that out of the Goodness of His Heart. He is a very nice man, after all. So it seems. But…I’ve begun to suspect that he thinks he misdiagnosed the supposed Valley Fever and in doing so gave her two drugs that he shouldn’t have given her. Either one would have made her very sick. The fluconazole, as we’ve seen, damn near killed her. The Temaril-P probably was responsible for the incontinence, explaining why that phenomenon is going away now that the Temaril has about worn off. He probably figures he practiced mal, and he’d better find some way to make up for it. Or to cover it with a convenient other ailment.

And lo! there is an other ailment, all right: 2nd Opinion Vet finally got a copy of the ultrasound — days after requesting it — and she said there indeed is a mass on one of the adrenal glands, but it’s impossible to tell what kind of mass it is. She uses the term “Cushing tumor,” which doesn’t seem to be standard — at least, I’m not finding it. At any rate, there’s a 50/50 chance the tumor is benign. The only way you can know is to take it out and biopsy it.

I can’t afford $1000 to operate on a dog that’s this close to the end of her normal life span. That sounds awfully cold…but it’s a fact of life. I don’t have thousands and thousands of dollars to spend on a pet…and if that’s what’s involved in taking in a pet, then obviously I can’t afford to have a pet.

A urinary tract infection is among several signs of Cushing’s disease, the effect of a tumor on an adrenal gland, and so if the tumor is non-benign,  she may  never go back to normal. But…it’s worth knowing that Cushing’s can also be caused by over-administration of steroids — of which prednisone is one. And we did give her two rounds of that stuff. Often iatrogenic Cushing’s clears up after you quit dosing the dog…although the stuff can do permanent damage. Gee, doc…thank you so much for telling me that [not!]. Do I have to look up every goddamn thing for myself?

2OV was also startled when I told her MarvelVet said her UTI was so minor as to be insignificant and did not need treatment. She said the numbers were about as high as they can get. Which would explain why the poor dog was peeing out undiluted blood. I gave the stuff to Ruby, who came to me from the breeder with a UTI, and she had no problem. This dog is agèd and has been very sick, indeed, and so we could see some side effects. But we won’t know until we try it. If it works, though, she may be OK. Also, if the cough is from a bacterial infection, the doxycycline may help with that. Which brings us to another gripe: MarvelVet has not sent the purported X-ray of Cassie’s lungs and heart to 2OV…hmmm…. Was there even a real X-ray, or did he show me some other dog’s X-ray to scare me into paying for expensive treatment for Valley fever?

2OV did not say so but she sounded a little nonplussed by MarvelVet’s prognosis that the dog will live about 3 months if left untreated.

Arrrghhh! I feel like the Wicked Witch of the West to be so skeptical about all this. But my own Adventures in Medical Science — to say nothing of past Adventures in Veterinary Science — incline me that way. I just have the worst feeling that this thing is not only a tempest in a teapot, it’s a fraudulent tempest….

Meanwhile, speaking of Adventures in M.S., I’m not yet very alarmed about the alleged skin cancer thing. In the first place, we don’t know that it is skin cancer. Young Doctor Kildare a) is not a dermatologist and b) is a D.O., not an M.D. Although osteopaths are licensed to practice medicine in this state, a D.O. from Midwestern University is not the same as an M.D. from Johns Hopkins or some such. YDK’s sterling quality is COMMON SENSE. And we see this characteristic here: Duh! Send this woman off to a dermatologist.

Hmmm…and lookee here: the lady is not just an M.D., she’s listed in U.S. News and World Report!

I haven’t been able to get in to a dermatologist for years. They’re all backed up for six months or more — literally, you can NOT get an appointment. So YDK’s having shoved me in to see this woman — in three days flat — is quite a little feat. And a relationship with her will be valuable for me, because when you live in Arizona you really should go to a dermatologist about once every year or two and have all the colorful growths that sprout inspected. Just about everybody who lives here permanently eventually gets some kind of skin thing.

Seventy-one degrees and a rainbow over the ’hood!

Dogruminations…

by

Okay, I may be one of two things:

a) Pathologically skeptical; or
b) Grasping for straws.

Lemme tellya…I  think there’s something mighty fishy about all this Cassie Standing at the Gates of Heaven narrative. My sense about this is that either there’s something MarvelVet isn’t telling me, or there’s some part of his story that just plain isn’t straight.

Let us consider what the story is. Or rather, what the stories are. Or were.

First, the dog comes down with a cough. I call the vet’s office and am told not to bring her in because something is going around, they know what it is, and they’ll give me a drug to ease it. I drive over to his place and pick up a bottle of Temaril-P, which is a combination of an antihistamine and prednisone. Its purpose is to suppress coughs.

She goes through the prescription, administered according to his instructions, but is still coughing.

If the human had been a bit less trusting — as it should have been, already, it would have come across this warning:

Do not give Temaril-P to your pet if the pet has a serious viral or fungal infection. Temaril-P can be given in the presence of acute or chronic bacterial infections provided the infection is controlled by antibiotic. Temaril-P may weaken the pet’s immune response and its ability to fight infections.

When I report that she’s still hacking, he has me bring her in. He does a blood panel on her and then, with no evidence in the results to prove this, tells me she has Valley fever. He then tells me to keep her on the Temaril-P and give her fluconazole.

Folks. Valley fever is a serious fungal infection. If he knew what he was doing (or believed what he was telling me…), why would he have me continue to give her a drug that is specifically contraindicated? And if she’s not getting better, why put her on a drug that reduces her ability to fight an infection? Assuming it is an infection.

The fluconazole makes her extremely sick. So much so that twice I think she is about to teeter over into the grave.

When I look this stuff up and discover a list of a half-dozen dire side effects, a couple of them life-threatening, he tells me oh, those are symptoms of Valley fever. By now I know that…well, no. No indeed, they are not symptoms of Valley fever. Not by a fuckin’ long shot.

I take the dog to another vet, who says it’s pretty ambiguous and there’s good reason to doubt that she has Valley fever. But by now she’s very sick, indeed. It appears she’s not going to make it. And by now, too, my skepticism is fully aroused. I decide to take the dog off the fluconazole on the chance — which I think is pretty good — that she doesn’t actually have this dread disease. Show me some empirical proof, and I’ll reconsider.

As the fluconazole clears out of her system, she  slowly improves. You can’t just stop taking prednisone: you have to titre off of it. But before long I have her eased off that stuff, to no ill effect. The incontinence stops. Prednisone, as it develops, can cause incontinence in dogs. Meanwhile, I happen to know that you can give Benadryl to dogs — have done so before. She’s wheezing, as though she has asthma. Of course, asthma has many causes…but one of them is allergies. She gets markedly worse on a day when heavy winds and rains blow through. Why not? think I…

Put her on a couple of doses of Benadryl, morning and night. Within a couple of days, she’s markedly better. Meanwhile the vet has me bring her in for this supposed “free” ultrasound scan.

Free? Really? Hm. Well, whatever.

Not surprisingly, the result is dire: he tells me she has adrenal cancer.

I say, “Well, then. We’d better put her down right now.”

His response is to say that it’s not necessary, because she seems to be doing all right for the moment. (Benadryl is some kind of chemotherapy, is it?) He says we should wait until she seems to get a lot worse, and remarks that she’ll have her ups and downs.

I ask how long she’s likely to live.

He says, “About three months.”

Uh huh.

I now look up this new drama and find a number of things out.

• You can’t know whether something that looks like a tumor on a dog’s adrenal gland is malignant without doing surgery to biopsy it.

• If the dog actually does have a tumor on her adrenal gland (I’m beginning to wonder; see below…), it may be harmless. About half of such growths are what is known as “nonfunctional,” meaning they just sit there and do nothing. Half are malignant and cause the dog to exhibit symptoms that look like Cushing’s disease. This dog does have a few such signs: thirst, vigorous appetite (which she’s always had: a corgi will eat until it explodes!), unusual lethargy. Alternatively, the mass may be an adenocarcinoma: an aggressive malignancy that indeed will spirit the dog away sooner than later. Interestingly, though, when you look that one up you find she exhibits exactly zero symptoms of it.

Hm. Day by day, she gets a little better. The Benadryl — or tincture of time, could be either one — seems to be bringing her back to normal. She still chokes and wheezes when she drinks water…but she’s always choked on water. Corgis do that: Ruby does the same thing. She’s now barking in her accustomed excessive way, and not wheezing every time she yaps. Or even any time she yaps. She’s beginning to lose the “tragic” expression and looks far more normal.

I’ll tellya what I think.

I think MarvelVet made an incorrect assumption on the fly. Chances are his original diagnosis — a bronchitis that was going around at the time — was right. But the assumption that a week on Temaril-P would cure it was incorrect, because of her age.

If you believe those silly dog-to-human-years charts, this dog is the same age I am. The last time I got a cold — apparently a fairly ordinary cold — it took me six months to get over the cough. A 12-year-old dog is not going to get over a bug as fast as a two-year-old or a five-year-old or even a seven-year-old dog. If my theory is correct, the cough hung on because it would take her longer to throw it off. And if she actually has a symptomatic cancer of the adrenal gland, she would not be steadily improving.

If my alternative hypothesis is correct — that she had asthma from the git-go — then what happened was the storms aggravated allergies that were developing and growing more bothersome as she has aged. One way or the other, the reason she did not show signs of Valley fever in the blood panel was that she did not have Valley fever.

I think he realized he’d misdiagnosed the dog, and that the meds he put her on made her extremely sick. May even have caused permanent damage. And between you and me and the lamp-post, I think this scan thing is a diversion.

He probably figures that if I don’t put her down and she gets better over the next three months, he can claim a miraculous cure. Or simply say the alleged tumor is of the “nonfunctional” variety and so, whaddaya know! It didn’t kill her…

Tellingly, his office has not responded to Second Opinion vet’s requests that they send the scan over to them for a look-see.

I wonder, really, if his alleged colleague even did any such thing…if they simply shaved her belly and told me this story. Even though I asked, I was never given a chance to see the scan — and when he was telling me she had Valley fever, he did show me an X-ray that he alleged to be her lung and heart.

Now admittedly: all of this speculation may be the product of a fevered brain. Or some part of it may be and some part may not be. We all know I’m a crazy little woman, and what we see here may simply be a manifestation of that, eh?

BUT…for a dog that’s pounding at death’s door with cancer, Cassie seems to be surprisingly well. Once she got off the toxic drugs, she began to come back to normal. Right now she’s barking without coughing, eating cheerfully, bright-eyed, and alert. Under the influence of 1/2 Benadryl in the a.m. and 1/2 in the p.m. (she only weighs 20 pounds!), she seems kind of sluggish and tired. But lo! Look it up and you find Benadryl has the same sedating effect on dogs as it does on humans:

The most commonly reported side effect is drowsiness. This is so common that many people give Benadryl to their dogs to help them calm down. (Diphenhydramine is even marketed and used as a sleep-aid by many people.)

The second most common side effect is mild disorientation. We recommend paying attention to your dog’s behavior after giving them Benadryl to make sure they don’t experience this before giving them a second dose.

Hell, I weigh more than six times what that dog weighs, and a half-pill of the stuff will knock me out all night! I use it as a sleeping pill.

Dollars to donuts, once she’s off that stuff, she’ll be her same old normal self.

Will she die within three months? Maybe. But that wouldn’t be surprising: I’ve never had a dog that lived longer than 12 or 13 years. And she’s at least 12 right now.

 

Doggy Doom?

by

So we’re told this afternoon’s abdominal ultrasound of Cassie the Corgi shows a large tumor on an adrenal gland. So that comes under the heading of “the last act.” The vet proposes that we not put her to sleep just now, since she seems to be doing fairly well — except for the cough (which she started with), all the other symptoms (which I still believe to be induced by the Valley fever drug and the prednisone) are going away. He says these symptoms will come and go, and he thinks she’ll last about three months, at the most.

I remain skeptical. Why? Because…

a) Cough and wheezing are NOT symptoms of adrenal gland tumors.
b) The symptoms she’s had that could be explained by an adrenal tumor also are classic side effects of fluconozale and of prednisone.

So what do we have here? The following potential symptoms for adrenal cancer:

  • Excessive water intake (polydipsia) Cassie: yes. But it’s also a prednisone side effect
  • Increased urine output (polyuria) Cassie: yes. What goes in must come out.
  • Increased appetite and food intake (polyphagia; affected dogs are often ravenous): Cassie: Yes: she lost two pounds in the coughing episode, so I’ve been feeding her more.
  • Weight gain, frequently to the point of obesity: Cassie: no
  • Abdominal enlargement (pendulous, distended abdomen; “pot-bellied” appearance) Cassie: no
  • Hair loss (alopecia; usually patchy and symmetrical on both sides of the body): Cassie: no
  • Darkening of skin (hyperpigmentation): Cassie: unknown
  • Excessive panting; often when lying down and appearing to be resting quietly: Cassie: yes
  • Skin bruising: Cassie: unknown
  • Clitoral enlargement in females (clitoral hypertrophy) Cassie: unknown
  • Testicular enlargement in males (testicular hypertrophy) Cassie: n/a
  • Loss of normal reproductive cycling in females (anestrus) Cassie: n/a
  • Infertility (males and females) Cassie: n/a
  • Weakness: Cassie: possibly
  • Lethargy, listlessness Cassie: no more than usual
  • Exercise intolerance Cassie: unknown
  • Muscle atrophy Cassie: no
  • Thin, fragile skin that tears easily Cassie: no
  • Poor coat condition Cassie: no
  • Lack of coordination (ataxia) Cassie: no
  • Neurological signs (circling, aimless wandering, pacing, bumping into walls or furniture, falling down for no apparent reason) Cassie: no
  • Poor wound healing Cassie: no

That’s pretty ambiguous. Yes, she does have some of the signs. But she also doesn’t have a lot of the signs. Some of the signs can be explained by whatever sickness caused the coughing, which was severe (and is now, finally, gone). Some of them can explained by her age, which is rather advanced. Two can be explained by the effect of the prednisone.

There are two types of adrenal tumors in dogs: functional and nonfunctional. This squib is a little clearer. A functional tumor is a malignancy, but a nonfunctional one is not. Apparently there’s really no well to tell without $urgery. Nonfunctional tumors need no treatment. If the thing is “functional” and it hasn’t metastasized, you can operate and get from 16 months to 3 years of extra life. I’ve already spent almost a thousand bucks on this. Looked at the bank account and almost fainted when I saw the balance. At this rate I’m going to run out of money for living expenses LONG before the end of the year that this year’s RMD covers. I’ll have to get a job. And at this age: fat chance!

So I’m going to try to get a second opinion, as a kind of last-ditch thing. Because, to tell the truth, after my Adventures in Medical Science I’ve learned to always get a second opinion every time some doctor (or vet) delivers a dire opinion. But I don’t hold out much hope. She is old. And obviously the vet saw something on her adrenals. Whatever it is, it ain’t likely to be good for her.