Chronic Illness without diagnosis

[Melinda0322]

Lola is an 11month old lab/hound mix. On May 10th she started sniffling and sneezing. Over a few days she developed hives on her snout, swollen glands under her arms, and congestion. After two weeks of cephalexin the hives went down, as well as her swollen glands. However, she became extremely lethargic, loss of appetite, weight loss, and hair loss/skin lesions. She was then started on a two week dose of doxy followed by two weeks of zenaquin. she has lost over 6lbs and was only 35lbs to begin with. She was just put on another two weeks of zenaquin. Her blood tests revealed high WBC, low RBC, and low T4. It is now about two months from the start of her symptoms and she is still very sick with little improvement from the meds. She is extremely lethargic, very achey, some refusal to eat, mucus secretions, pale discoloration of nose and mouth, continual loss of hair, and rapid heart beat. In all honesty, I don't think the vets have a clue as to what is causing this. I have had three opinions thus far. I feel completely helpless and so sad for poor Lola. Any insight is greatly appreciated!

[Aleda M Cheng, D.V.M., C.V.A]

This is an extremely difficult case because there are so many disparate symptoms.  

Have your vets performed the following tests: blood work for tick diseases including Babesia?  How about testing for: leptospirosis and performing blood cultures for fungal and bacterial infectious diseases? Have they performed biopsies of the enlarged lymph nodes, and skin lesions?   If not, it may be a good idea to consider some of these tests and others if deemed helpful.

Most of the tick borne diseases do respond to doxycycline, but Babesia does not respond to doxycycline and must be treated with medications that your dog has not been treated with yet including clindamycin with metronidazole,  and others.

Another uncommon disease that fits many of Lola's symptoms is canine histiocytosis.  

There is quite a lot of information about canine histiocytosis in the following Pub Med linked journal article (though it may be a bit technical):

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1978291/  

Since you are located in Philly, you might consider taking your dog to the University of Pennsylvania, School of Veterinary Medicine, which is right there.  They should definitely be able to help Lola.

Good Luck and please give us an update.

[glow007]

I wish I coud have an answer for you, but I do not. I do have 4 dogs so I love the furry babies. I would try to talk with a Holistic Doctor since the regular ones do not know. I have a sick cat and they cannot tell me either. So I will pray for your beautiful Dog Lola. Good Luck with her and I hope for a speedy recovery.

Sincerely,

Glow