Now She’s Thriving

You may remember the emaciated blind Shibu Inu who came to us back in January — who we thought was in her kidney failure because of her initial blood panel? Well, we’ve got nothing but good news on her! You can see in the photo above that I took this morning how different she looks now compared to the day she left the Georgia shelter for New Hampshire:

We learned from a follow-on GI blood panel that her emaciation was due to a medical condition called exocrine pancreatic insufficiency, or EPI. This occurs when the pancreas stops producing enough digestive enzymes, so the body can no longer properly digest food and get the necessary nutrition. In effect, you slowly waste away, which was what was happening to her. Fortunately, there is a simple fix: we sprinkle a teaspoon of digestive enzymes — Viokase-V powder, derived from pig pancreases — on her food, mix it in, and wait for 15-20 minutes. Those enzymes do the work.

As is often the case with EPI, Camille also has a cobalamin (vitamin B12) deficiency. This can result in GI issues, immunodeficiency, and metabolic disorders, among other problems. So along with her enzyme supplement she gets added B12 as well.

We had already gained a couple of pounds on her before we got the EPI diagnosis, just due to feeding her enormous amounts of high-quality real food. But once we started her on the supplemental enzymes her weight gain was dramatic — we could feel her get heavier almost by the day. She went from 14 pounds to 22 pounds in just weeks. Her once thin, brittle and orange-looking coat filled out and became a normal color.

The blood work we did at our primary care clinic when Camille first arrived showed she was in kidney failure. Thus in February we took her to our internal medicine specialist in Burlington for an abdominal ultrasound and more diagnostics. I was astonished when the internist walked back into the room with the latest blood panel results — Camille was not in kidney failure! Her kidney values had reverted to normal range.

I had never seen that happen before — in our experience, once those kidney values go south (both BUN and creatinine), you’re in kidney failure and facing a chronic decline. But the internist said a reversal can and does happen. He had suspected as much because Camille’s urinalysis results from our primary care clinic’s testing didn’t square with her kidney values, so he wasn’t surprised by the latest blood work.

We suddenly went from thinking we were managing a hospice case to having a little girl who hopefully will still have many years with us! It was really an emotional roller coaster, but this time one we were happy to be on.

As I mentioned in her first post, there isn’t anything we can do to restore her vision. But you can probably tell from the two photos above how much less her eyes bulge now. Our veterinary ophthalmologist prescribed two eye medications — tacrolimus and oculenis — for her every day, and it’s really made a difference in her eye comfort.

I took her back to our internal medicine specialist in late March for a recheck of everything. Fortunately, her kidney values were still normal. Here’s how the internist summarized her various issues:

So yes, a complicated medical case to be sure, and still things to monitor, but nothing we can’t deal with!