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Thanks everyone. Yes, it does seem like she keeps dealing with one thing after another. On Patrice’s advice I asked my vet about increasing her dosage. I was told their standard dosage for treating Lyme was 2-5mg/lb once a day unless it is a larger dog. They said because of the side effects they do not like to dose twice a day. They also said they treat 4-5 cases a day in the height of the tick season. I do appreciate your advice, but I also trust their opinion. At this point I’m going to stay with the dose and keep monitoring her. She already seems like her old self so I hope I’m making the right decision. Thank you for the information!!
I’ll keep you posted.
Jen & Mags
Hi Jen
What a rotten thing to happen – I’m so sorry. I don’t know if you know that Worzel had a tick disease called Ehrlichiosis (we’re 99% sure) which caused him to have the bone marrow failure. The specialist who trained at Cornell said we must dose him high with the doxycycline – he was given it twice per day for 5 weeks. I can’t stress how important it is to hit these diseases really hard. If the dose is not high enough or for long enough the Lyme’s will not be killed off – it really is a horrible disease which can do a lot of damage,as you know.
Worzel did suffer tummy ache with the doxycycline at the beginning, but giving him sucralfate (the usual 2 hours away from any other meds) stopped this.
Patrice really is the expert on this – I have read many articles myself & all recommend high dosing for long periods.
Hoping she will soon be on the mend – keep us posted!
Love Sheena x
Hi again. Since hearing all your opinions and rereading the information Patrice provided, I’ve been bothered by Maggie’s doxi dose. When I original called about increasing her dose, I spoke with the vet tech who assured me it was the correct dose and that was their standard dosing protocol for treating Lyme. But it has been on my mind that I may not be doing the best thing for Maggie so I called again and finally spoke directly to her vet (her vet was not in the office the day she was diagnosed with Lyme). He agreed that the dose is on the low side and suggested bringing it up to 220mg divided into a dose every 12 hours. He too believes in hitting the disease in higher doses. I want to thank you for passing on your knowledge and insisting I reconsider.
Best Regards
Jen & Mags
Hiya Jen
Glad to hear your vet has agreed to this – you are awesome & you will always do your very best for Maggie. I feel much happier she’s on the increased dose.
Love Sheena x
I’m hoping Patrice reads this post. Maggie has been in 110mg doxy for 2 wks and 220mg if foxy for the past week. We just had a second urinalysis & she still has protein in her urine. The vet is sending out the urine to the lab for further testing. Do you know what can be going on with her? She doesn’t have any symptoms of renal failure yet. Are there any tests or further questions I should be asking? Is this a result of the Lyme disease or could it be something else? Should the protein be decreasing since starting doxy? She currently eats hills prescription diet zd along with green beans & zucchini & has hills zd treats. Any information or suggestions would be so helpful. I’m scared this may be kidney failure. Is that treatable?
Thanks Jen & mags
Jen,
I am glad that your other vet agreed that the higher dose is more important than the first vet did. Some vets stay on top of the current literature and apply it quickly to their clinic protocols. My own vets attended a conference a few years back and at one of the presentations about treatment, she told me that there were such variable opinions that it broke out into a “brawl” as vets argued about dosing protocols. She told me “it’s a no brainer, hit the tick disease hard, fast and long the first time out so there won’t be a relapse.”
The length of the high dose treatment is important for the long term “suffusion” of the body tissues as it can get to ALL the spirochetes hiding in the body. If you want to think of this as something like a fire you want to put out, imagine how you keep spraying water on it for a long time until all embers are completely burned out.
I am not sure if you have mentioned if either of them contacted Dr Holland at Protatek Labs? It’s important to monitor how “well” the doxy is working with testing. She could advise them of the steps they need to take to determine if the disease is diminishing.
http://www.protatek.com/reflab/contact.html
It is well known that in dogs the kidneys can lose a significant amount of function before symptoms are even noticed. I hope you will read this information written by Mary Straus at DogAware about kidney disease. Mary is a consummate researcher and I trust everything that she has on her website. Here is her webpage devoted to canine kidney disease.
http://dogaware.com/health/kidney.html
Specifically I am pointing you to her information about the new SDMA Idexx lab test, please read this information carefully so that you understand it. I suggest that you encourage your vet to use THIS test.
http://dogaware.com/health/kidney.html#sdma
And note that Mary has a specific section under SDMA, devoted especially to proteinuria, that explains this topic. Please read all of this carefully.
“If your dog has protein in the urine (proteinuria), that calls for additional diagnostics.”
Also read this section carefully;
http://dogaware.com/health/kidney.html#protein
I’ve not seen any of your lab tests so I am blind about what your vet is seeing. However I know that spilling protein into the urine is not normal and should be carefully examined.
There are other reasons, for instance a dog with a UTI (an infection that is causing the problem) or an older dog that has a heart condition (may spill some protein into the urine as the heart fails to pump enough blood to the kidneys.)
Chance developed some degree of uremia when he had heart failure. He began to spill protein into his urine and the goal was to adjust his meds so that his heart would function better and get more blood to the kidneys. So his problem was not related to kidney disease.
So follow me carefully, there can be uremia due to “pre-renal” causes (heart disease), renal causes (damage to the structures of the kidneys), and post-renal causes such as infection or structural damage to the kidneys or bladder or associated ducts. For instance scar tissue or neoplasia.
So it important to follow up on what is really wrong.
Out of all the conditions that Lyme can cause, I am always most concerned about kidney symptoms (protein in the urine) and neurological symptoms (such as facial paralysis). This means that the spirochetes have managed to invade areas that are more sensitive. The earliest signs tend to be general musculoskeletal such as pain in a limb, areas that are easily reached by the spirochetes.
So the kidneys have delicate filtering structures that perform all the work. What Mary is trying to explain is that nearly 75% of them can be damaged before there may be signs of kidney disease.
Lyme nephritis is one condition that can cause this kind of damage. Once these structures are damaged, they cannot be recovered. However the long term use of doxy can protect the kidneys from further damage. Many many dogs live a long time with carefully managed kidney disease. And there are several groups on the internet that have true experts in helping owners care for their kidney dogs. I have read all the information, but I am not an expert. Diet is incredibly important, especially when it comes to managing protein intake (there are many misconceptions about this). Mary covers this in detail on her website.
Please read this information and have a chat with your vet about it. They will appreciate that you have taken the effort to educate yourself and will be willing partners in providing Maggie the best care.
One last thing. My vet is an incredibly smart and compassionate person. When we were discussing Chance’s problems, she told me that the kidneys are so incredibly smart that in comparison her own knowledge about them is extremely tiny. She indicated the tiniest tip of her pinkie what she knows. Your vet will probably agree that they are very complex organs.
Let me know what you find out asap.
my best
patrice