Evans Syndrome :(

Keymaster

Amy,
If you have time please read Chance’s Story under our Stories. He had basically the same condition as Coal. He was put on high doses of prednisone and nothing else for several months, eventually becoming dangerously anemic. It wasn’t until I started Dr. Dodds protocol, which you should have, that uses a very high dose of cyclosporine did he begin to recover. Within a few months he was healthy again and by about 10 months his body was more or less back to normal.

I remember vividly one beautiful Sunday afternoon when he had been on high doses of prednisone for several months and was quite sick. We weren’t at all sure he would live. Mark had decided to give him a hair cut, as Schnauzers need to be routinely groomed like this. I didn’t know and when I came outside I was horrified that he had cut his hair. I told him that Chance would not be growing any hair back because of the prednisone. And indeed his coat became like a brillo pad and he developed staph infections and several kinds of skin growths. It was very sad to me. Dogs with hair, not fur, have significant impact to their coats. He looked so bad I would feel the need to explain to people that he was ill and that his hair would grow back.

If you read Chance’s story you can look at the pictures of him when he was at his worst and at the top of the page you can see Chance a year later after he had fully recovered. The pictures of him really sick show a dumpy dog with no muscle tone, a swayback, a ratty coat, distracted with bulbous eyes. The picture of him at the top of the page shows a healthy and robust Giant, head up, with great muscle tone and his eye on a distant squirrel in his yard. He lived another 3 years and we lost him to an unrelated heart condition at the good age of 12.

There is reason for plenty of hope. Please stop reading the rather gloomy statistics about these conditions. Many vets are still not well versed about these very complicated bone marrow conditions. My specialist was among that group. I had to abandon him in favor of Dr. Dodds. My own vets were delighted to help her to prescribe the protocol to him. Within a month of starting him on her protocol he responded and began to recover.

Dr. Dodds has done this her whole life, every day, and she is an expert in this condition. Most vets may NEVER see this condition in a lifetime or may see a few in a couple of years. They quietly go back to their office and pull out their reference books and find older research that may be outdated or based on studies that involved only a handful of very sick dogs. That is exactly what my specialist did. He came back to me and said “you have a beautiful dog.” He was trying to tell me to not have much hope.

I never gave up hope and I did everything in my power to save Chance. And one of the most important things I did was to never show any grief or sadness around him. I treated everyday like it was a normal day for him. When he could no longer go for a walk, I would go through the motions of putting his leash on, getting treats and heading out as though we would be going for a walk. By the end of the driveway I knew we would not be going, but I would sit with him there, as the world went by, for the length of the time of the walk. Making him believe that all was normal was essential to his home nursing care.

It is very hard but I have never been so focused in my whole life. I stayed up all night studying a veterinary hematology textbook so I could learn more. I have not stopped studying these conditions since those days in early 2007 because I know there are so many owners like yourself that just need someone to believe in you and stand by your side.

Knowledge is power and the more you understand about the science of how and why this happens and how and why the drugs work, the better able you are to make decisions based on fact and not on emotions. So when you make a decision like this there are no regrets. You made the best decision you could with the knowledge you had at the time. Regrets eat you up and make you sad.

It would be impossible for you to learn all I know in the next month however. That simply means you have to trust Vally and me and believe that we really have helped hundreds of owners successfully. Follow that protocol carefully and make sure all the accessory drugs that Vally has discussed are being used to keep him as healthy as possible.

Long term prednisone use is quite bad for all the body systems. Cyclosporine for dogs has way fewer side effects and any that it does have will go away within a day or so of discontinuing the drug. It is necessary for the cyclo to be at a high dose now so as to saturate the body tissues, getting to the bone marrow.

Coal adores you and will follow your lead in all things. You are a good Mom.
my best, Patrice

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