Split: Split: For Hope and Steve – Page 9

Keymaster

Hope,

This is not unusual at all. This has to do with a dog’s spleen.

The spleen in a dog is a bit different than in a human’s. My vet says it provides the function of an “instant transfusion.”

Dogs, as you probably know, tend to live their lives either totally sacked out or in a state of huge excitement. There are very few times when they are not paying at least some attention to their environment. And they can go from sacked out to ballistic if the door bell rings or they see a squirrel. When they are sacked out a lot of blood can be stored in the spleen. So much that they can sometimes have a condition called “nocturnal anemia.” Or, there is so much blood in the spleen that the circulating amount would be considered anemic.

To help them with this amount of arousal, their nervous system prepares them quickly for fight or flight. By now, most people understand that when we are stimulated like this our stress level goes up. Our body must respond to this fight or flight by preparing itself to provide more oxygen, greater blood flow and alerting the nervous system. Dogs are no different. The main stimulant is a form of cortisol that the adrenal glands produce.

The spleen provide several functions. One is simple blood storage. Another is that it is responsible for removing old worn out blood cells from circulation. It does this by forcing all that stored blood through tortuous pathways. The old cells can’t navigate well and they break apart. The parts are scavenged and either reused or eliminated. We see the heme, the iron molecule that carries O2, in our stool as a brown color. We destroy old red blood cells and make new ones everyday of our lives. The third important function is that the spleen plays an active role in our immune system. It’s a busy organ.

So dogs have very strong muscles that surround the spleen. Those muscles respond to stressful situations by squeezing the spleen tightly and releasing a great amount of blood back into circulation. This can happen very quickly.

So perhaps you can understand better how a dog can go from having pale gums to having bright red gums. It has a lot to do with the stimulation of their nervous system. Bright red gums are also evident when a dog is overheated. You can tell how dangerously overheated by how red they can become.

We worry about dogs that are undergoing a reduction in prednisone because the adrenal glands have been “asleep” while being flooded with excess cortisol. Yawn, why should I bother making this cortisol if you are going to overload me?? They shrink and are not as responsive to the stimulation.

We decrease the prednisone slowly so we can wake the adrenal glands up carefully. But at some point we do have to challenge them some so they can go back to work, and that is when we go to lower doses and every other day administration.We look out for “not doing well” and upwards to “instant collapse” as indicators that there is a disparity between the low pred dosage and the body’s instant needs.

Rapid reduction is sometimes necessary, if there are significant and life threatening side effects. My dog Chance was one of those, he had been on high dose prednisone for months before Dr. Dodds put him on Atopica. We had to get that dose lowered as quickly as possible because he was so sick from it. So there were days when I was quite worried about his adrenal response. It is not a comfortable time for dogs, but it is eventually necessary to get those doses lower.

So I am guessing that right now Steve is at a point where his adrenal glands are not very active due to the high doses of prednisone, you are lowering of the dose of prednisone and stressful stimulations are not being handled as well as they could when he was healthy. In other words the reaction to fight or flight is a bit hampered.

His gums are going to probably be pale when he is resting or sleeping. They should be responding with more color (his PCV is up around 36%, correct?) when he is aroused from rest or in stressful situations. “Hey let’s go for a car ride!” If they aren’t then watch him more carefully for other signs of not handling stress well.

You will get through this ok. You have a smart vet who knows very well how to decrease this med and Dr. Dodds has been doing this for many decades. Enjoy your time with Steve and be good to yourself.

my best

patrice

Details