So how IS Frank?

Well, there's not a whole lot going on with Frank. He is improving steadily since Tuesday. On Tuesday morning, I actually thought that I might have to put him down. He was miserable, skin inflamed, seemed feverish and was refusing water. His ataxia had not improved and seemed a bit worse. I called my vet and luckily they said to bring him in and I dropped him off to stay for the day.

Seems the vet on Saturday misdiagnosed his demodex and it is really sarcoptic mange. Which is contagious but easier to treat and not re-occuring. The only thing she did get right was the severe pyoderma but because we were only treating that and not the mange...he was not improving. The dose of ivermectin for demodex is much less than the dose for sarcoptic.

We took him off the pain meds, put him on prednisone to work on the inflamation and allergic reaction to the mites. Changed his ivermectin dosing. Since that alone did not account for his ataxia, we decided to re-do his HW test to include lyme and erlichia, did a fungal culture and bloodwork.

Not a whole lot interesting in his bloodwork except for a couple of values. His thyroid is below normal at .8. He could be hypo thyroid secondary to his current illness or this could be a growing problem for him and in rare cases hypothyroid can cause some ataxia and muscle weakness along with lethargy and weight gain. It would be hard to tell at this point which is the first one because he is definately very tired but he is on the thin side of healthy weight.

He is also mildly anemic, again could be secondary to what is going on. WBC normal range so for the moment we are ruling out an infectious agent at this point.

tick titers were normal

So for now we are going to work on his skin and closely monitor his neurological issues this week and come next week if there is not improvement as his overal health improves we will re-address and perhaps do a thyroid panel. If his anemia and thyroid values are secondary to whatever is going on....they should begin to resolve. None of this really addresses the cause of his unsteadiness and we still don't know the answer. If we had more history, we could potentially know if he was born this way, got this way due to trauma, trauma of a single event like HBC or multiple events (abuse), etc.

He said if we choose to go the thryoid panel and get no results, then there is the spinal tap and/or mri and possibly a specialist. I am not ready to consider those options at this point.