frustration sets in sometimes

the first week of march i was about at my breaking point.
sway had a severe, severe case of AIHA/IMHA...
now a confirmed case of SIBO as well...
and the unsolved symptoms/visually looking exactly like an EPI dog on top of everything else.
only problem is that the EPI tests come back stating there is no EPI.
matter a fact it stated that the test was completely in the opposite range of EPI, instead bordering on either pancreatitis/renal dysfunction/or severe malnutrition.
--
my dog eats every single night, yet cannot gain a single damn pound!!!!!!!!!!!!!
when i take her outside some people might look at me as if i starve and abuse her.
not that i care what other people think, but the scenario is unsettling regardless...
i have no answers as to what is happening to her, 3 great doctors, no answers.
and she just looks so incredibly bad.
i'm tired of her looking so bad and compromised.
she looks far worse now, than she did 6 months after being diagnosed...
no answers.

i mean, we are 21 months into this thing...
her blood count hasn't recovered but (aside from this recent drop) has remained a steady 20-28% for nearly the last 15 months...
how can her body not physically recover after 15 months????
it's not like she is on high doses of meds,
she is not.
the only hard med she is on is a very minimal dose of prednisone, and that is every other day.
she gets soloxine daily, and then her nandrolone injection weekly.
the rest of the additives are supplements.
there is no explainable reason as to why her body is like it is.

the biggest knife in the heart is that i feel like it's something that hasnt been addressed yet...and it's just flying under the radar and i absolutely feel guilty that i don't know what it is.
i was almost praying IT WAS EPI, how horrible does that sound?
but atleast i could then say, AH!! that is the reason her body is so broken and begin to get to the bottom of treating it as dillegently as possible...
i mean, you can just search 'EPI images' and swap sways picture in for any of the dogs that come up and she might even look worse...
i'm just so angry.

i'm financially on the verge of bankruptcy...
i fought it off once, and here i am again, on that ledge...
but i'm fine to stay on the ledge, i'd accept being broke as hell for the next 20 years as long as i can just get some clarity as to why this is happening!!

sway is such an amazing dog.
God i love her so much.
i tell her allllll the time that things will get better, we are going to beat this thing...
and she has been amazing, she is incredible.
she has such a spirit, her eyes are my favorite thing in the whole world.
i know she's with me, i just wish her body would catch up to her...it's a travesty.

it's like we have just been thru a monster of a tornado...
and now, yes...we are physically out of the actual funnel cloud, but we are still living in the house that was ravaged by the tornado, and we can still visually see it causing destruction down the street.
that is how i feel.
--
i vented this at the vetnet forum and i thought i'd put it here too.
it's just frustration, but it's a real emotion and i don't want to under-sell how overwhelming this disease can potentially be.
i pray that nobody has to go thru this long of a rollercoaster ride, but if you ever do, allow me to be an advocate for you...
feel free to email me anytime because i'm going thru it.
being able to vent does sort of allow you to push the reset button, so sometimes you just need to talk it out with yourself, compose and then keep moving forward.
i'm fully committed to my dogs recaptured good health and will not allow any setback get me down for too long, but it does still happen...just know how to put it into perspective and mold that energy into something positive.

another PCV drop, transfusion, TLI results

her blood draw on the 24th of january revealed only a 17% (down from 26% 3 weeks earlier)
the next week on the 31st she was down to 15%
this was pretty devastating as she had been holding in the mid 20's for a long long while.
we had to transfuse her on february 3rd and 2 weeks later her PCV only revealed a 16%
this was her 9th blood transfusion and first since 2007...
very sad that we could potentially be back to that.
on the 14th i upped her prednisone from 2.5mg EOD to 5mg EOD.
(the standard processing supplements were started on the 3rd of feb.)

the daily problem i wrestled with was that i couldn't continue 'being patient' when sway was just wasting away in front of me...
my vets did not think she had EPI but i wanted to officially test her for it as i just needed to know one way or the other,
...sway is such a champ and loving life thru such multi-faceted dire conditions, but her anorexia is just a daily devastation.

on february 21 she was given a 3-part blood test (trypsin-like immunoreact) to confirm-deny an EPI diagnosis.
when the results came back the numbers showed it was not EPI, however the folate portion did officially diagnose sway with SIBO...
this is all so frustrating.
i was positive this was what was co-affecting my girl (in combo with AIHA) - i'm still quite confused that the numbers came back the way they did.
...almost in the exact opposite direction of an EPI diagnosis, instead showing borderline pancreatitis or renal dysfunction.

click here for her TLI results

i am going to keep her on the pancreatic enzymes for now, as i hope they are helping in digestion.
she is still on her weekly steroid injection.
i've also re-started the b12 and iron injections that she was getting every 3 weeks thruout most of 2008.
this time i'm giving b12 injections every week and phasing down in 6 week intervals.
iron staying tri-weekly.

january, treating as EPI also

after stopping the meds, things actually remained steady thru december and there was no dive in her blood count.
her PCV was tested on january 3rd and it was up to 26%, which made me very happy.
the constant peeing had also been drastically reduced and it was almost like she regained control of her bladder completely.

her body frame however remained fragile, and so that remained the highest of priority for me.
first thing we did in our attempt to counter this was run a SNAP 4DX test...
this checks for heartworm, ehrlichia canis, lyme disease and anaplasma phagocytophilum...
these results came back clear of any red flags.
we then did a dry food change, this did not help either.

patrice helped me out a lot in gathering information for a condition called EPI (extreme pancreatic deficiency)
looking at pictures of dogs that have this condition is exactly like just simply looking at sway.
they are identical in view, from the sunken skulls, to the fully exposed rib cages, the exposed spinal line all the way down to the sharp hip bones and compromised muscle mass.
as soon as i saw the information about this condition, i was 95% sure this had to be something that was happening to sway too.
my vets did not agree but i wanted to start her on the treatment for it anyways, as there was no downside to it.

the treatment itself consisted of mixing pancreatic enzymes into sway's food and allowing time for the enzymes to break the food down before sway ate.
this process is intended to allow for better overall absorption of food...
we started the enzymes (bio case) on january 18th.