AIHA or IMHA

izzywieds

2/13/09 – Leptospirosis 4L annual, rabies 3 year, D2a-pv 3 year
She was also getting bordetella every 6 months because we take her to Chihuauha Day at Pet Smart day camp.  Although not anymore ☹
Probably way over vaccinated

Given that was mid-February coupled with a lot of stress, I'd say it was pretty safe to bet it was vax/stress related.  Jokey smokes Bullwinkle that was a LOTS of shots to get on one day.  Yipes!!  Lepto is the one single vax that is most prone to causing reactions, and it looks like the parvo/distemper/adenovirus was a modified-live shot (which would have been AMPLE to do in one day not to mention the rest of it) -- They'll shed virus in their STOOL for 3 weeks or more, and that coupled with stress was a huge hit to the body.  Man, I honestly can't believe they did ALL those vax in one day.  *shudder*

calliecritturs

Man, I honestly can't believe they did ALL those vax in one day.  *shudder*

Never thought about vaccinations before IMHA.  Both of my dogs have had all these vaccinations and all done at the same time.  Any future dogs of course I will stick to Dr Dodds schedule and space the vaccinations out plus use killed virus when possible. 

I think that places like Petco or Petsmart as well as easier to find online resources should have some sort of education program about IMHA and vaccinations.  Would be nice if breeders of purebreds educated the people who are adopting from them too.  

The reading I've been doing has shown that vaccination reactions usually happen within a month of injection.  Have you seen anything saying that it could take 3 months before a reaction to a vaccine?  I think that stress may really be the cause in this case.  Not that we'll ever probably know.  With Clops it wasn't stress, nothing out of the ordinary happened anytime around when she got sick.  I still wish I knew what happened.  I kept thinking maybe she ate something outside (don't know what) as I know she didn't get into anything in the house.  

:waves: Just wanted to jump into the thread (which I haven't been reading much lately--busy, busy year for me; explanations below) and say welcome! I'm sorry for the reason behind your coming here, but glad you found this place. The people here are fantastic and incredibly supportive. I learned SO much two years ago when Ems was sick (she'll be a two-year survivor the first of July!); I truly don't know how we would have made it through without the forums. It's not just advice (I've not only changed the way I interact with vets but also the food I feed Emma because of things I've read here and on the Italian Greyhound boards), it's support and understanding. It's true that only dog people know how we connect with dogs...but only IMHA people understand the kind of anxiety and fear and wonder and hope that goes ping-ponging around inside us when our dogs are struggling with this awful disease. Blessings on you and your little one.

As for me--this year I've been teaching an additional class (because our superintendent decided that since classes were shortened from 60 min to 50 min years ago that meant we needed to teach a sixth class), learning/teaching a new (pretty awful) curriculum, working on National Board Certification, teaching SAT prep to junior/senior high kids on Sunday afternoons, and, this spring, dealing with bilateral pneumonia. :P Now I'm helping my dad get my mom through shoulder surgery (tomorrow morning) planning (hopefully!) for a trip to NY in July, revising the SAT prep course for the fall, moving my classroom to another building, and gearing up for assistant department chair duties.

:deep breath: I think that covers it.

Emma is curled up in one of her beds (her main one is the queen-sized in "my" bedroom) next to the computer. I'm watching her more closely today, because last night she seemed content to curl up in the bedroom at bedtime instead of staying with me while I was reading in another room. There was a warm, fuzzy blanket on the bed, which is where she was--but, see? Paranoid now. :D We'd just gotten home from quite a stint at my parents' house, and she was reacquainting herself with the house, but because it's not 100% the way she acts, I'm wary. I figure I always will be--but the past two years with her have been such a blessing, and she has grown so much sweeter (I really do think they KNOW when they're sick and that we're trying to help them) that...well, I hate to say I wouldn't undo the IMHA experience, because I would in a heartbeat. BUT a lot of good has ultimately come from it as well as the bad. I hope that makes sense. I like to say that we are in "our second year of grace." God willing, there will be many, many more.

Wow, this is a tome! Sorry about that--and prayers for all of you facing this. Keep fighting, and keep up your dogs' spirits. It's an unfair disease in that more effort doesn't always ensure a good outcome...but we have to do everything we can.

<3 Wendy and Emma (who turned seven at the end of April)

GratefulDawg

The reading I've been doing has shown that vaccination reactions usually happen within a month of injection.  Have you seen anything saying that it could take 3 months before a reaction to a vaccine?  I think that stress may really be the cause in this case. 

The "month" window is really small logically speaking because they DO even still shed the vax in their stool for THREE weeks and it takes much longer than that for full immunity to be built.

Remember -- this is all the body's reaction to ITSELF.  I.e., it's not just the checmial itself that "makes" IMHA happen.  It's the body's response TO the chemical or TO the stress -- and something causes the body to look at "invaders differently.   The body is SUPPOSED to see the disease cells introduced to the body in a vaccine as an "invader" -- that's the whole purpose of it.  Tthe body then makes "anti-bodies" to that disease  -- but with IMHA and other auto-immune diseases somehow the body doesn't stop there.  It generalizes -- just that antibody that *should* be there after the disease should be acceptable by the body and the body should leave it alone -- but somehow in this disease process the immune system continues to look and an DISAPPROVE OF that antibody -- and it will begin to see THAT as an invader.  Then it generalizes further than that and says "Hmmm, this blood cell looks a whole lot like THAT one ... and I don't like THAT either BLAM!!!"

This is seen in how the different forms of IMHA evolve -- for Clop her body simply targeted all BABY red blood cells (reticulocytes) if I recall.  But for some reason her body left the adult ones pretty well alone.

In Billy's case -- his body just decided it disliked ALL red blood cells -- so not only was it killing all the baby red blood cells, but even transfused blood was being killed right away

The immune system becomes a runaway freight train -- and as it gathers 'steam' it generalizes more and more until the drugs step in to stop it.

So ... the dog has a ton of vax in Feb ... and for 2-3 weeks that vax is STILL in the body (that's what I mean by "shedding cells" - literally disease cells in the body come out in the poop, which yeah - can be contagious to other dogs).  It's not a magic process -- and it is **very** individual on how rapidly that transformation to "immunity" occurs.

Things like "stress" exacerbate anything in the body -- including this.  Stress is going to weaken the immune system (which was already having a tough time processing the vax probably) and it's going to continue to set the body up for more problems. 

Most of the stuff you'll read saying "One month" is reluctant conclusions that have been published by vets who really don't want to admit that vaccines CAN cause problems.  It's 'testable' -- but IMHA is far more personal and changeable than that.  It could have been one more chemical, one tiny bit of extra stress that caused the immune system to re-double its efforts and cross into auto-immune. 

That's also why auto-immune will morph in mis-process to another auto-immune disease -- like with Outdoorschik's dog Snickers.  She HAD the IMHA but then it morphed and changed (probably because of stress) and ADDED the cytopenia component that killed platelets TOO. 

Yep--Ems apparently had the "lets go crazy and kill AAAALLLL the red blood cells!" kind, like Billy. And I agree re: the timeline not being hard and fast; she had had her vaccines just a few days over a month (so, of course, the vet's office kept saying, "we don't usually see IMHA after that long." Uh-huh. Perhaps it was because I'd been reading about overvaccinating and went in for her annual with the "no more than necessary" mindset--but was talked into the complete battery even after I said, "I really don't want her to have anything more than necessary";). She also took a bit longer to start responding to the meds; her emergency vet thought she wasn't going to regenerate because of it, but she did! <3

As for National Boards--it's a lot of work! I didn't certify after my first attempt (last year); missed it by 16 points. I knew I'd bombed Entry 3 (the small group videotaped lesson/analysis) because, though the lesson was exactly what my students needed, and it went well, I realized when I was analyzing the video that it didn't show what the scorers would need to see (that is, it was a great lesson but because the students were almost entirely self-directed and I was just checking in/advising, it didn't show me fostering their conversations). This year, instead of just filming a successful class session, I sat down and thought about what I needed to show in order to demonstrate my strengths in the areas that entry covered, and shaped the form of the lesson so that you could see those specific elements on the tape. Then I went through and used their scoring guide as I wrote my analysis and reflection, and made a checklist of objective--evidence, objective--evidence as I chose my video segment and wrote about it. I also redid a second entry as insurance; I'm hoping I improved both and will certify with points to spare. I did well enough on the Assessment Center exercises that I didn't even consider redoing any of those (they bank your score if it reaches a certain point, and the ones they didn't bank were close enough that it didn't seem worth the money--the AC stuff takes far less time than the portfolio, so I WISH I could have redone one of those!). If you want more info, drop me a note at my username at gmail dot com. :)

(Sorry for the offtopicness.)

This steps on the toes of the straight medical types who, honestly, are scrambling to avoid litigation often -- but when you see "deadlines" like "a month" those have been set by people who just plain DON'T want to admit potential culpability.

But -- Dr. Bailey told me in JUNE of 2006 "I'd rather figure out what CAUSED Billy's IMHA if we can, because the reality is that most dogs with auto-immune problems have to stay on steroids for the rest of their life and those steroids DO shorten their lives.  If we can figure out what CAUSED this and we can identify a specific cause, we have a far better chance of getting him to not relapse and to get OFF the drugs permanently.  We don't know if that will be possible, but we want to try!"

And that from my REGULAR vet.

But that's why I was so pumped (wrongly so -- VERY wrongly so) when we thot initially that it was tick-disease related. 

 And btw .. I was *always* told that the window was at least two months on vaccines and at least 6 weeks on stuff like tick disease.  Now not all of that is stuff I've read, but it's anecdotal -- because not only did I do a TON of reading and talking to folks back when Sandra Slayton's dog had IMHA, but I have another close friend (co-worker at the time) with a weim and her auto-immune was completely scattered and started when she was about 10 weeks old, and last I knew, Sydney is FIVE now and still taking low doses of pred, spaced out a bit. 

But in other words, it's not just IMHA -- I deal with two auto-immune diseases MYSELF (psoriasis and rheumatoid arthritis) and I can tell you some drugs can take 6 months or better to work their way thru the body and stress can affect fast .. or slow.  That's not medical knowledge - it's personal experience.

Hello Everyone,

 Someone asked me to come on here and give and update on Lily. She is doing GREAT. We stopped all of her meds and she is back to her normal self, weight and eating. I am very happy. Please everyone if your dog has this, keep your spirits high and they will feel it. Good luck!

 Thanks for the update on Lily.  I was really wondering, and its been so long since you've posted.  So Lily is another 6 month survivor.  Good to hear.

calliecritturs

because the reality is that most dogs with auto-immune problems have to stay on steroids for the rest of their life

This is what I'm wondering about with Cyclops.  When we brought her home they said at OSU that she'd likely be on some dosage of Cyclo for the rest of her life.  But I'm wondering if they'll decide at some point to taper her off completely.  I am suppose to check to see if we're going to go from 100mg 2x/day to 75mg 2x/day after the next CBC. I just wonder how low we'll ultimately go before she decides to hold it where we're at.  

At the dose she's at now, her fur is a real mess.  By mess I mean that before Cyclo her fur was luxuriously soft and silky, felt so good to pet her.  The color was a deep black and bright white and the fur had a very healthy look to it.  

Now her fur is going grey, just a lighter color all around.  The fur is rough and dry and "frazzled" like a perm gone wrong.. split ends.  I've been giving her a fur and skin suppliment from Drs Foster and Smith and also a Shed Stop suppliment.  Both have various fish oils, omega 3's and 6's, flax seed oils, etc.  I think that these are helping, as at least her fur is not falling out and is still thick.  I'm thinking of trying to find a moisturizing shampoo or conditioner that is still hypoallergenic to see if I can bring some life back into the fur.  

Anyway I'm hoping that these things might impove some if we can lower the Cyclo a little more.  

Callie did you have some nervousness when you got Billy off all the immuno drugs altogether?  I have a feeling it will/would make me very paranoid.. its like I feel that the Cyclo is giving me some level of "insurance" against a relapse.  A love/hate relationship is what I have with Cyclo.

Have a great weekend and say hi to Billy and the rest of the doggies.

GratefulDawg

Callie did you have some nervousness when you got Billy off all the immuno drugs altogether?  I have a feeling it will/would make me very paranoid.. its like I feel that the Cyclo is giving me some level of "insurance" against a relapse.  A love/hate relationship is what I have with Cyclo.

Some nervousness?   Noooooooooooo not at all -- I HAD A COMPLETE FREAKING NERVOUS BREAKDOWN EVERY TIME WE LOWERED IT!!!!

*sigh* It's true -- **even NOW** I get completely nervous -- Heaven help me if the poor dog falls asleep with his chin on the floor and when he wakes up there's been no circulation to the mouth and his gums are .... GASP SHOCK TERROR ***PALE***

be still my heart.  *sigh*

So very much fo this is about re-teaching the body to operate properly.  This is where the homotoxicology (the auto-sanguis treatments) has played an *enormous* part -- it is truly what it excels at.  "body balance" -- the thing that makes the skin and fur so crappy is because of this enhanced inflammation in the body (because the immune system is neither really 'on' nor 'off' -- it's chemically controlled so the body is generally a bit inflamed all over)-- the body's inability to get rid of all the toxins caused by the meds -- so the skin breaks out and the coat is crappy.

Billy's always been such an allergy dog ANYWAY -- which is another type of immune problem.  And man -- it was soooooo super mega **the worst** while he was on the cyclo.  But as we weaned off them that subsided a bit.  But nothing really helped -- it was defying any of the Chinese herbs -- he was on antibiotics half the time -- but of course antibiotics can CAUSE IMHA, but then so can inflammation.  So either way we were kinda fubar'd *sigh*

THIS is where I turned to Dr. Demers and the homotoxicology.  And honestly, if you can figure out how to hook up with Dr. Broadfoot -- that vet I emailed you about?  She is literally one of the two best in the entire country -- and frankly, with her you would have an **excellent** shot at getting Cloppy off the drugs **and back to real health**. 

And I guess to MY mind the difference in what I spend on the homotox and what I would be spending on the drugs and the side effects (because Billy's skin problems were monumentally expensive before all this **started**) is negligible.

And for me?  the chance to have him whole was just too awesome.  She is SO close to you -- and initially you might have to take her for auto sang treatments every 2 weeks a couple of times.  But then you go to a month and then 6 weeks.

I have a feeling the thing that is keeping them from lowering Clop's dose is the fact that her 'crit climbed SO slowly.  The fact that her crit climbed so very very slowly probably indicated that the baby red blood cells were still dying to some degree. 

Honestly?  That is also something Dr. Broadfoot can help with -- a huge part of her practice at this point IS all about IMHA because the whole thing is about re-teaching the body's immune system to go on and OFF properly.  With IMHA the immune system gets *stuck* in the ON position.  It never lets up -- and the only way regular medicine knows to treat that is with the immune-suppression drugs.

But those drugs simply shove the sickness deeper into the body.  The sickness and malfunction is still there -- just deeper inside.  And until you get the body to function as a "whole" and to WANT to do what it should you can't achieve balance. 

The other thing to think about -- when it all started I DID **NOT** have a well dog.  Billy has **always** in the FIVE YEARS we've had him -- he's had THE crappiest skin ever!!  He was a mega allergy dog to START with.  The IMHA just made it worse with the drugs.

I"m completely convinced he got *dumped* by his original owners (he's about 9 now) BECAUSE his skin was so bad and because his EARS were so bad.  I think she was a single mom and just couldn't handle more expense.  And when his ears went bad again (*because of allergies*) she gave up and ditched him at the rest area. 

soooooooooooooo my point is -- we were NOT starting from "healthy".  The dog I have NOW  *****IS HEALTHIER***** than he ever was previously.  The homotoxicology has taken us THAT far.  But it took longer with Billy simply because he was flatly sicker! 

Cyclops wasn't.  She was essentially a healthy, happy dog pre-IMHA.  So my hope would be that you could get her back there more easily. 

You've done all the right stuff and I'm not faulting you -- but if you want the *best* shot at getting her off the drugs completely and more easily then I would heartily recommend emailing Dr. Broadfoot and  just asking her for a realistic estimate.   She's a straight shooter -- she's not gonna con you and she already knows about Cloppy.  She can't give you any guarantees but she will tell you what she charges and what, in her estimate, it might take. 

But to go back to your original question -- I shook every single time we reduced the drugs -- and I think the scariest was when we went OFF the pred!!  Because he'd been so darned sick and they took him off the pred SO fast and I expected him to relapse then and there.  And then he almost darned DID after they started to reduce the cyclo.  *be still my heart*

love/hate?  That about sums it up.  The drugs saved their lives.  But they will also kill them long term because they are so darned destructive.  It will at least shorten their lives.

Billy is an OLD nine.  But he is a **healthy** old nine.  That sounds like a contradictuion in terms and it really isn't.  He is truly healtheir NOW than he was before and I have Dr. Demers to thank.  Because I honestly don't think he would have stayed "ok" after we got him off the cyclosporine.  His body was too up and down and too "always inflamed".  I wasn't sure we'd have him by the next Christmas.  And now I'm hoping it's possible to see him have the opportunity TO get old.  That truly will be the answer to my prayers -- if he can just grow old WITH me.  *sigh*

(edited because I can't spell on a Friday nite)

Whooo hoooo ! MAJOR HAPPY DANCE!!!!

Great to hear the news on Cooper.  Tessy is just starting to lay with me...although she doesn't lay for too long.  She still prefers the hard floors.  Give Cooper some hugs from Tessy & I.

Johnny & Tessy

I got a question concerning UTI's.  Tessy just finished her 2 week coarse of antibiotics for a UTI she had.  My question is...Should I take her in to have another urinalysis done a few days after finishing the antibiotics or should I just watch for signs?  She acting better and isn't having the stink pee anymore.  There's also no noticable blood to be seen in her pee.

I have noticed her belly is getting bigger.  I'm not overly sure what to think of this.  She's been off the 8mg aspirin for almost 2 weeks now so I don't know if this might play a role with this issue.  She's also down to 20mg pred/day from the 50mg almost a month ago.

Thanks,

Johnny & Tessy