Today's Vet School Visit

Lot's of info from today's visit, but not a lot of definitive answers (anyone surprised by this?). Let's start with the easy stuff...

The urine tests showed that her kidney's are working normally, with her UPC back down in the normal range.

Her hip x-rays showed that the implant looks just like it did two years ago, no sign of infection or other problems. They also showed that her left hip looks a lot worse than it did two years ago, but that's not a surprise, either. Its good to know that the implant is doing its job.

The sore that was on Reyna's belly two weeks ago appears to have healed up, although its a bit hard to tell since the latest mass ruptured fairly close to the last one. The vets are happy with the general improvement (smaller sores) but concerned that there was a new mass. The bacterial infection is completely cleared up, but Reyna is to finish the last week of her antibiotics. The Derm vet prescribed two topicals (one anti-fungal and one antibacterial) to keep the infection gone until she sees him on the 18th. They did a surface swab today and found eosinophilic inflammatory cells, which can be caused by parasitic infections, allergies, bug bites, foreign bodies or certain tumors. The Internal Med vet still thinks there's some underlying cause to these masses/sores, but the Derm vet has a different opinion. He seems to think that the healing incision has irritated Reyna and she's causing the sores by licking the thin skin. Of course, he's not explaining how she's creating the masses first, nor is he explaining what caused the initial mass/sore that resulted in the surgery that created the incision... We'll chat about all of that on the 18th. And about the fact that if Reyna were reacting to an irritation of some kind, we wouldn't be dealing with small sores (I'll have Dr. Lapham chat with the Derm vet to explain just how much damage Reyna tends to do with this sort of thing - the Derm vet will believe him more than me, I'm sure). So, no more info on the sores/masses for another two weeks.

As for the weight loss, it turns out Reyna has lost another two pounds in the last two weeks (she's down to 67lbs). The GI panel came back normal, which means she should be absorbing nutrients properly. I had a long chat with one of the nutritionists today, and she's putting together a potential food plan to try and get Reyna back up to at least 72lbs. She thinks Reyna probably isn't getting all of the vitamins and minerals she needs, but she realizes she's dealing with a dog with several food allergies and a sensitive stomach. She also thinks its possible that Reyna doesn't have enough pancreatic enzymes to properly digest everything, no matter what the test results show (those enzymes actually came back near the low end of normal). We tracked her weight over the last few months, and it shows that she started losing in June (could have been muscle mass since we weren't walking due to her stomach issues) with the significant loss starting around the appearance of the first mass. Reyna did gain weight after the surgery, and then lost again around the time the second mass showed up. The nutritionist and Internal Med vet both agree that whatever's messing with her belly has most likely had at least some impact on Reyna's weight. Hopefully we'll get the nutritionist's suggestions tomorrow and we can start trying them to see what (if anything) works.

I think that's everything from today...