CIMDA

Hi Jo, Thank you for the information. I will discuss the prednisone dosing schedule below. She had been given 20mg 2x/day - she hovers between 45-50lbs so that's right on for the lowest dosing of 1mg/kg every 12 hrs. She threw up in the middle of the night of day 2 on the med (normal looking throw up for her), but another day after and she was vomiting was looked at first like diarrhea (I came home to a messy house and didn't know what had happened...then I read about vomit from ulcers looking like coffee grounds and it made sense).

She had blood work done again today and started her first dose of the cyclosporine this evening. We have a follow-up for blood work scheduled for Monday. I got copies of all of her records while I was at the vets office today so I am going to review and can post more specifics on the different blood counts.

I haven't considered Addison's disease, but will read up on it and see if anything stands out in the records I have. The vet tech also sent me a link to the ultrasounds and other diagnostic imaging that has been done in the last year. I am not sure I'll be able to tell much from that, but I will be curious to take a look. My sister's fiance is a radiologist so I may ask for his expert opinion...even though I know humans and dogs are very different.

I was able to get Millie to eagerly eat her breakfast this morning by adding a bit of olive oil to it and she seemed to be in better spirits when I got home from work. I'll try to continue to encourage eating and hopefully we will get some answers soon.

Hi Everyone! I was referred to this forum by a member in the BoxerWorld forum as my dog Millie (9 year old boxer) was recently diagnosed (loosely anyway) with an autoimmune disorder. From what I have learned, she has the symptoms of Evans Syndrome in that she has essentially no platelets and significantly decreased red blood cells and it's getting worse. We haven't ruled out lymphoma, but the vet wants to see if she responds to the immunosuppressive therapy.

To give a little history - about a year and a half, almost 2 years ago she first presented with low platelets. They suspected erlichea and have a long course of doxycycline. She seemed to do ok and her platelets went back up, not entirely, but improvement nonetheless.

Fast forward to this past July, she had a check up and her platelets were still low (78K) and we did another course of doxycycline. In August she got really sick and wound up back at the vet and hospitalized for a day and a half. Her platelets had dropped again into the 40s. I can't exactly keep straight the course of events from there, but she seemed to recover well enough and we went back for follow-up blood work in Sept. Her platelets had gone down again and were in the 20s. We started an aggressive course of predinose which she did not tolerate well at all. After a few days she began vomiting what looked like blood and her stool was really dark. We managed to avoid the e-Vet that weekend, but saw our vet immediately and she was taken off the prednisone. Her platelets were now 5K and her red blood cells has dropped. The vet suspected it was due to some kind of stomach ulcer caused by the prednisone and so we waited to see if they would bounce back up at all.

Well..they haven't. She still has essentially no platelets and her RBCs are continuing to drop.

This past weekend she had a collapse, but it was so brief I thought I'd imagined it. When she collapsed again on Monday we went right back to the vet. RBCs down even more (26%), still no platelets.

The vet did an abdominal ultrasound and said she saw no signs of abdominal tumors or unusual growths, although one lymph node was somewhat enlarged. She said we needed to start an immunosuppressive right away and cyclosporine has been called in to a local compounding pharmacy to alleviate some cost. I will pick that up tomorrow.

She is currently on Imuran 50mg (1 tablet once a day for 14 days), Famotidine 10mg (1.5 tabs 2x/day) and sucralfate 1g (2x/day given 1 hr after other meds).

She has also been on Proin for incontinence for quite some time since she has had incontinence issues since she was a baby, but it's much worse with the steroids and she requires a diaper. She has always had elevated kidney values which we believe to be the culprit of the incontinence, but this has been since before she was even 6 months old. I had originally been told that she possibly had Juvenile Renal Disease and we would be lucky to hit 2 years...well...here we are and she just turned 9 a month ago.

She has in the last few months also had a little bit of fecal incontinence where I have found little poop nuggets (no better way to describe it) where she had been laying. It's not a regular occurrence, but I thought worth mentioning.

She seems to be losing some weight, but still seems to have an appetite. She only weighed 50lbs to begin with and I'm guessing she is closer to 40lbs now.

I am here to hopefully find some information that could help our vet with treatment and get her on the road to recovery.

Of all things we could be facing, this is a bit like salt in a very fresh wound. My father passed away this past June after a long battle with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) in which he initially presented with low platelets which the doctors suspected was auto-immune related. It's all a bit fresh, but at least I had a crash course in understanding blood disorders and functions.

I also have a male 9 year old boxer named Ozzy. He had a mast cell tumor removed last week as well. Biopsy results came back today and we got the best possible results (SubQ and low grade with excellent margins). I would like to end 2017 on a happy note and want my Millie feeling better.