Health Issues, The Long Story
Well, here's what's up. I must warn you though, this is really long.
When Monkey was brought in to the vet for being unwell, he had a tick-borne bacterial infection and high liver enzymes. For the last month during follow ups and blood work, his liver enzyme was off the charts a month ago, then went significantly lower but still way off from normal, then after ending the treatment was off the charts again. At his blood test after a month of doxycyline, the results were almost normal already so the vet wasn't concerned about that. The attention now was shifted to his liver. We had been referred to get an ultrasound for his liver at a bigger facility and in the meantime, to feed him hepatic diet (Royal Canin) and give liver supplements.
It was three weeks before we got around to doing the ultrasound that due to $$ issues but during that time, we changed Monkey's diet to boiled chicken and rice instead of his usual dog food. The thought behind that was we read that hepatic diets are low in copper content. Acana's was 20mg/kg versus RC's 5mg/kg. When we got the results, we went back to our vet and discussed the results and the ultrasound printouts. He said Monkey's liver should be showing as really black blob but he has faint white "shadows" which could indicate some damage. There were scary words mentioned like biopsy, fibrosis, specialist referral, another ultrasound. But Monkey passed all checks - he wasn't yellow, didn't have diarrhea (at this time), wasn't vomiting (not yet), not bloated in his abdoment, still a steady 6kg since last year, so no weight loss at all. Basically, no other symptoms except the high ALT levels.
He tested his blood again and this time, his ALT from "over 1000" three weeks ago was now 767 (normally 16-110 only). It was still very high but we felt positive since we were able to get it lower even without special foods and liver supplements during this time. If we got him those, we were positive we would be able to decrease it further. So for the meantime, the plan is to go strictly hepatic food and liver supplements.
We ordered the Royal Canin from the vet and set out to search for the liver supplement in the pharmacy. Turns out, this liver supplement he wanted us to give Monkey was waaaaay out of our means. It would cost us (converted) USD109 just for a month's worth. We shopped around and found a milk thistle (silmarin) supplement that was more within our budget (around $6) and got that instead. While we wait for the kibble, Monkey is back to boiled meat and ground beef with rice.
Then two days after, he started having diarrhea from 3am Tuesday and vomiting which continued for two days. He was poo was going dark chocolate color already, going sometimes between 30 minutes to 3 hours and his vomit was having a reddish tinge. We had to take shifts during the night so we could take him out when he has to go. We brought him in again after realizing it wasn't going to resolve itself. Thankfully, that's sorted out now and he had two normal poos in the last two days. He bounced back so fast, I think he may have gained his weight back and more. He lost 300 grams from his diarrhea.
I called the vet Monday to ask whether to continue his antibiotics as he already seems better and has had his first normal poo (No) and if he still needs to see Monkey on Thursday (Yes) and if we should restart him on the liver supplements (Yes). I knew he wouldn't allow us stopping the antibiotics but I just had to ask just in case because Monkey hates it and I feel sorry for having to force him take so many stuff, especially pills that I have to push to the back of his throat.
That's where we are now. Sorry to bore you with a whole wall of text. Here's a photo of a dirty rag in need of a good washing.
He will be getting a bath later now that he's okay.
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