Hey guys!
I will continue to be incredibly non-active on this blog but here's a quick but long Boe update.
He had an MRI back in September bc we were still trying to figure out why he was suddenly having so many issues with his back legs and I was told he had possible immune mediated neuritis/neuropathy. He was then put on a very high dose of Pred. Because of this he suffered from severe muscle loss. Like severe. After a month we started decreasing it and started going to physical rehab.
In the middle of this I did some bloodwork on him which showed elevated liver values. We rechecked it in a month and the liver values were still elevated, he had total protein loss and there was protein in his urine so we were then concerned for protein losing neuropathy.
At the same time, Boe's neurologist began to ghost me and started taking forever to get back to me. So I took him to a different neurologist and found out he was essentially misdiagnosed and didn't have to be on the Pred this whole time. And through all of this time the original neurologist never got back to me. I should have sent an email or something to someone higher up at the hospital but it's too late now and I hate being that type of person.
Boe went back in for a recheck with his internal medicine vet where we started doing some tests to rule out things that could have caused his bloodwork results and we finally got Boe off of the Pred completely. A few weeks later he's already starting to get his muscle back!!
One of the things we tested him for were tick born diseases. He came back borderline positive for Anaplasma which could very well be the reason behind his bloodwork. And honestly could be the reason he was suddenly having lameness issues back in August (which started all of this). But I keep him on tick prevention year round and I never find alive engorged ticks on him so the thought of testing him for tick born diseases back then never even crossed my mind. None of his vets thought to do it either.
So long story short, he's now on a course of Doxycycline for the Anaplasma and we're rechecking his lab work at the end to see if there's improvement. He had an ultrasound just in case bc he was having some GI issues and I was worried about colon cancer again, but thankfully it was all clear.
I hate that this potentially could have been avoided if any of us had even thought to do a tick born disease screening (considering that's something we routinely do for sudden onset lameness) but it is what it is and I've learned my lesson.
I think he may always have issues with his left rear leg now but we'll see as he continues the Doxy and starts really getting his muscle back.
And that's the update. It's been a wild time but he's back to being my happy go lucky kid and I couldn't ask for anything more. ❤