Adverse Rabies Vaccine Reaction Update 6 Weeks After Setback

Whew! We’ve been running around like wild monkeys, with as many as 6 veterinary appointments per week. You have our apologies for not posting about every little shift in Lilly’s health. Here are some highlights from recent weeks, as Lilly continues to recover from a terrible bladder infection (caused by immune-suppressing treatment for her adverse rabies vaccine reaction >> brain and spinal cord inflammation).

Here are the headlines:

Lilly’s treatment for emphysematous cystitis continues. She has another 10 days or so of antibiotics to go. All told, Lilly will have been on meds for this severe bladder infection for a total of 7 weeks, when we stop them around March 15. During that final week, we’ll do another urine culture and (probably) another ultrasound to see if any air remains in her bladder and bladder wall. We’ll need to decide what kind of regular monitoring Lilly might need going forward since this is likely to happen again.

We’re waiting on our pet insurance claim for these not-staggering-but-significant costs (probably $1,800 by the time we’re done).

Lilly resumed cytarabine injections (“chemo”) last week, after going 7 weeks without them. The reversal in our decision to nix chemo came after more sobbing than you can imagine and many, many sleepless nights.

Our growing team of veterinary (and other) experts felt that without cytarabine Lilly had maybe a month before a significant relapse would have led us to euthanize her.

Once I told Tom that news in no uncertain terms on February 20, we decided together that we were NOT quite ready to let Lilly go.

[We’ve had FAR too much grief for years now, including finding his late mom’s barn kitty dead in the snow on February 21. All hail Chloe Kitty.]

Lilly has a new veterinary neurology team, led by the one who pioneered the use of cytarabine in cases of brain inflammation (for whatever reason) in dogs. It’s a LONG story why we chose to make a switch. Being such a fiercely loyal person, the decision did NOT come easily to me. In fact, I found myself nearly as upset about making a change as I did about Lilly’s worsening condition. Suffice it to say that a breakdown in communication left me feeling abandoned at a critical time.

The transition of Lilly’s complicated case isn’t an easy one. There are pros and cons:

• PRO: The new neuro team works at a ER / specialty hospital that already knows us and Lilly well. It’s where we first took Lilly when all this began in January 2012. At the time, they didn’t have neurologists in house, or Lilly’s case would have lived there from the get-go. These folks know us (going back to our past dogs), and they know Lilly from her many medical adventures and emergencies since puppyhood.
• PRO: This hospital is closer to us.
• CON: Somehow, it can still sometimes take nearly as long to drive there (up to 45 minutes).
• PRO: It’s possible to take safer, surface roads when the weather is bad (which it was 3 of the 4 trips for chemo last week).
• PRO: I  have access to the neuro team regularly by phone and email.
• CON: It’s possible, but complicated, to do the 4 cytarabine injections on weekends. So, Lilly will now get them on weekdays. I’ve always done all 4 drives to / from, but Tom will help so that I lose less of my work days.
• CON: Exams / consults and cytarabine cycles are more expensive (sigh). Not a lot, but still … now that we’re over $20,000, every dollar is a strain.

Lilly’s incontinence has improved some thanks to acupuncture and physical therapy, but she may always be in diapers.

I just found some sores in her inner thighs and gooped them up with diaper cream. Poor sweetie.

For both budgetary and practical reasons, we cannot continue these “extra” treatments weekly much longer.

We’ll keep doing physical therapy at home each day, however. We typically do about 10-15 minutes of work, then Lilly is exhausted.

We’ll do 3-4 more weekly acupuncture appointments before trying an every-other-week schedule for a while.

Some days, Lilly has the energy / stamina to walk to our gate, near the road, and back twice. Other days, she looks at me like I’m nuts. We’ve had a LOT of snow in recent weeks, but when the weather improves, we’ll spend more time outside poking around for exercise since it now seems unlikely Lilly will be able to take “real” walks / hikes.

Tired and rambling, but that’s our news. Thanks for your support and patience.

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I continue to worry about Lilly, about my budget, about work, about myself, BUT I keep plugging away the best I can. I might be able to muster a weekly blog post for a while. We’ll see.

I try to post at least once a day on our Champion of My Heart Facebook Fan Page (because it’s fast and easy), so you can always check there for little snippets of news.

Mostly, I’m desperate for SPRING. This winter has done me in. I’ve been driving my old 4Runner in all the bad weather. It’s great, except for the $75 / week in gas. Yikes!

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P.S. I didn’t have much work in February, which (I suppose) is good since Lilly had SO many appointments. I used the “down” time trying to find and upload (again) nearly 600 missing photos from the blog. It’s a long story how it happened, but it relates to our move to WordPress years ago.

In some cases, I just cannot find the photo in my archives, so I’ve added a note to those blog posts apologizing for missing photos. BUT, when I can find the photos, I am uploading them and inserting them into the posts as they originally appeared. It’s discouraging and time-consuming work.

A broken link tool I have installed on the blog alerted me to this and other linkage problems.

I *highly* recommend putting copies of ALL photos you post to your blog into a special blog photo folder (maybe by month / year, if you’re that organized) so that if you ever find yourself in this situation, it isn’t quite as painful to fix.