New here, 11 year old sweet JRT mix just diagnosed with CushingÂ’s

[labblab]

Absolutely, all fingers are crossed — and toes, as well!

In your quest for medication, one thought occurs to me. You might try contacting an American Cushing’s specialist who has also served as a clinical consultant to Dechra. His name is Dr. David Bruyette, and he was actually a member of our forum here at one time. I won’t bother listing his many accomplishments and all his expertise because you can read about that elsewhere. But he definitely knows his stuff, and he might be able to offer you some suggestions in terms of your dilemma in obtaining medication. He used to be the medical director for VCA Veterinary Hospital in Los Angeles, but now heads a private veterinary consulting service. Here’s a link to his informational page. I’d suggest you try emailing him personally (his email address is on the page I’ve given you). Definitely tell him you were referred to him with your question by the staff here at K9cushings.com. He has always been especially kind and helpful to our members here. He may not be able to offer any suggestions that you don’t already know about, but you just never know...

https://www.veterinarydiagnosticinve...n.com/about-us

And no matter what, good luck and please do keep us in the loop!

[Mia’s Momma]

Thanks for the great tip/contact! Will definitely keep you posted...and will no doubt continue to have more questions too. So glad I “found” you all.

[Mia’s Momma]

Hi there,
Quick update on Mia’s situation: we are on day 9 of Vetoryl (15 mg from a split capsule) now. The good news is that she’s had no adverse side effects and seems to have regained quite a bit of energy (so happy to see a little bounce in her step, her wagging tail, and her eagerness to be petted). The bad news is that her CC (and, we think, secondary skin infection) continue to worsen: the CC has spread all over her back and now all over her head, behind her ears, and on her hind side; she is also oozing more and more pus and is itchier than ever.
We will see the vet on Tuesday and they will do a blood test then, but we won’t get results back for a couple weeks. Given the current symptoms, not sure whether the dosage should be increased or not? (We found a an American vet friend who will kindly rewrite a prescription from us after this doctors visit, so we should be able to get the new dose in a couple of weeks!). Also, would welcome any other suggestions for her skin relief. We’re going to ask the vet if he thinks she should be on antibiotics . Thank you!

[labblab]

Welcome back, and I’m so glad to hear that Mia is showing at least a bit of improvement in some areas. How about her thirst — have you seen any changes with that yet? It’s also great that you have a vet in place to help intervene with future Vetoryl shipments. If it just wasn’t for the darn CC, I’d say that things were going as well as we could hope for right now. Since I don’t think there’s any way that you could divide the capsule contents more accurately than just splitting them in half, I fear you’re kind of stuck in terms of dosing options right now. The only alternative would be giving the whole capsule, and it seems as though that would be a stretch until you have the results of the blood testing. Such a frustrating situation, for sure...

As far as the CC, if by any chance you’re a Facebooker, this is a group that’s been recommended to us for support:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/988564191285009/

I’m not registered on Facebook myself, and unfortunately it’s a private group, so I’ve never been able to view it myself. But if you can access it, that would probably be a good source of info and suggestions. Barring that, you may want to take a closer look at the CC thread on our Resources forum here that I referenced in an earlier post.

I sure wish I could be more directly helpful to you, both in terms of the Vetoryl and the CC. But hopefully things will start turning around before too much longer!

Marianne

[LauraA]

A lot of people have used Activated Charcoal with success for CC. You make it into a paste and put it on your dog until it has dried (approx 20 minutes). Then you can just rinse it off. But it is going to make a mess DSMO is something else that is commonly used. You only do a small section of your dog at a time though, so one small section each day maybe. Some shampoos that are recommend for CC are Jax and Daisy and trixchlor is meant to be really good.

[labblab]

Many thanks to Laura for her suggestions! Also, it occurs to me to mention that many people have warned that even after effective treatment has been started, CC often tends to look worse before it finally makes the turnaround to improvement. I think this is because the calcium deposits that initially formed have to follow a natural progression of breaking through the skin’s surface before there will be resolution. The treatment of the underlying Cushing’s will hopefully halt the production of new underlying deposits. But unfortunately the ones that already exist will follow that progression, and for a while, the skin may look even worse and your goal remains keeping the discomfort and possible infection associated with the existing and newly erupting plaques as controlled as possible.

I wanted to mention this so as to continue to give you hope even though Mia’s skin may be looking worse. Every step you take to lower her cortisol will hopefully help things in the long run. But in the short run, things may continue to look worse for a while longer. But do hang in there!

[Mia’s Momma]

Thank you for the words of encouragement and the suggestions! Not on FB, unfortunately, but you both have shared some good ideas here. We will give some of them a try (whenever we can get these items here...sigh). With how bad her skin looks, I’m wondering if there’s more than CC going on now...if I can figure out how to post some pictures, I will do so and ask for some thoughts.

[labblab]

Oh, poor little Mia and poor you guys! I’m no expert, but those pictures do look pretty classic for CC to me. I’m going to send a message to one of our other administrators who is very active on Facebook and who first recommended that FB group to us. Perhaps she’s become aware of some other non-FB resources, as well, that she can recommend. I’ll surely hope so.

[Mia’s Momma]

Thank you! I wasn’t sure if I posted the pictures correctly and who could view the album (welcome your suggestions if I should’ve posted elsewhere...still don’t quite get the hang of some of the forum features!). We had a pretty disappointing/unhelpful visit to the vet today where he just prescribed more cream for her skin and said to come back next week for a blood test. Upon our inquiry, he agreed that antibiotics would be a good idea and prescribed some. He said no baths (though she smells awful from all the draining pus and infection) for a while as it would be too taxing for her skin. Sigh.

[labblab]

You posted the pictures exactly correctly. In terms of antibiotics, I think there’s some thought that minocycline may have particular value in treating CC. Don’t know whether that’s available you or not, but here’s a related article:

https://www.k9cushings.com/forum/att...8&d=1521729240

And I’m afraid I don’t know what to think about the bathing. I think we’ve heard both approaches — that it’s s good thing vs. that it’s not so great :-(((. I’ve just now sent off my message to our other staffer, so hopefully she’ll have some additional thoughts to add before long.