Update on Whiskey - husky w/ 0 platelet count. 🤍 GOOD NEWS 🤍

I want to start off by thanking everyone who replied with advice, kind words, and prayers for my fur baby. I was a wreck and reading thru all the positive comments on my post as well as my gf’s post helped a ton, from the bottom of my heart, God bless you all and your pups. 🤍

Photos are from this morning and a few minutes ago.

TL;DR: Whiskey is back home and is recovering, but we’re not out of the woods yet. He is at risk for hemorrhaging, including life-threatening brain and lung bleeding while his platelets are 0. His steroid medication will take 5-7 days to fully kick in, and we are scheduled to come in for daily blood checks every day until then, to make sure his RBC doesn’t drop, which has been normal and holding stable. The int. med vet is diagnosing it as ITP. Any sudden worsening symptoms/drop in RBC will mean back to the ER and possible blood transfusion. Successful recovery once platelets have improved by day 6 will be 4-6 months or longer on steroids. Compared to what his prognosis could have been, this is pretty good. 💙

I was contacted a few hours ago by the internal medicine vet at the ER that his ultrasound results for cancer or other abnormalities internally were NEGATIVE. We had just visited him a few hours earlier and I was elated. She then said that given all the results so far, and the fact that his platelet results this morning were still 0, but the RBC was the same, she strongly believes it is ITP.

We then discussed if we wanted to stay at our initial estimate for the bill we paid (about $5.5k), then he is a good candidate to take home. This would save us about another $2.5k in ER bills, about another 2 days. Which of course would help us with treatment costs. But we need to keep him as stable and calm as possible, basically as if he still at the hospital, and we’re in charge of giving meds. We also need to go in for blood checks every day (~$100), seeing if his platelets change (probably will not improve until day 6), and more importantly making sure his RBC isn’t tanking which would mean possible hemorrhaging, back to the ER and possible blood transfusion. She said of course it would still be better to keep him at the hospital, but given all the info and her experiences she felt it was a good option.

She did tell me since the steroids will typically take 5-7 days to properly suppress his immune system and let his platelets regenerate, his gums bleeding and eye spots will most likely continue. He could also spontaneously hemorrehage (out of pretty much anywhere: skin, anus, mouth, eyes 😔) and need to be hospitalized. If it’s in his lungs or brain, there’s no way to prevent, predict or treat and would most likely be fatal. Any significant trauma would also not heal. So no rough play or hard exercise, just walks in the backyard for the bathroom. No collars, only harnesses. Also no vaccines ever anymore.

He’s gonna be on Mycophenolate, Prednisone moving forward and was given a low dose of Vincristine yesterday. Omeprazole to prevent ulcers, Ondansetron for nausea, and Trazodone to combat the zoomies.

The fellow with the Texan husky who replied on my last post had mentioned systemic ehrlichiosis which I brought up. It is pretty unlikely this is the case, but will officially ruled out when evaluation from NCSC vet medicine comes back in a few days, making sure it’s not a tick-borne illness that wouldn’t come up on regular tests. I also mentioned a few other tests/concerns you amazing people told me about, like bone marrow biopsy, but at this time, ITP is what they’re going with and those tests will not be needed UNLESS he does not improve as he should.

He has been home a little over 3.5 hours now, I am playing calming healing music for dogs and he is just snoozing away. He will be getting dinner (bland soft food for him rn- probably sticking to chicken and rice) along with all his meds for tonight soon. I love that he refuses to ever use his own bed lol. I brought up the concern of drinking too much water but I was told that won’t be an issue and he hasn’t wanted more water so far but we’ll still keep an eye on it. We’ll be checking him often for bad signs and monitor him at all times. My family and gf are the best.

Hopefully, once he’s better by day 6 or 7, they will begin to wean him off the steroids and start his full recover over 4-6 months: letting his platelets return to healthy levels, and mitigate and treat any relapses. If the relapses happen, it will probably mean he needs lifelong treatment with these meds.

**** ALSO I want to say that while I appreciate the advice in seeking a new vet and will most likely do so I DO NOT blame my main vet whatsoever. I was informed by the internal medicine vet who of course specializes in this stuff, that the results from blood test last month were not at all at a level she would consider alarming. Even if then Optho and initial ER vet had mentioned that. A lot of these times the tests aren’t accurate either, in fact his RBC was lower last month than now according to that test. His bleeding gums are not uncommon, and while it was taking longer than usual to heal, these auto immune diseases are rare and blood test would have taken another few days.

I was of course emotional when I wrote my last post and I feel bad for making that a point when the specialist told me otherwise. Without them referring me to the Optho and giving me a list (which I was able to schedule with the first office on that list for the very next morning) my Whiskey could be DEAD. They ultimately started the process to SAVE my baby’s life and I owe them the world for that. I know they care for my dog and that this is hard to catch. The main reason I will be looking for a new vet is because of Whiskeys specific issues.

However I do still want to make the point to doggy parents out there, like one of the replies said, our pets cannot advocate for themselves so we must be the ones who do that for them. Get their blood tested often, get 2nd opinions whenever possible, take them to specialists (Optho, Derma, etc) whenever possible, I didn’t even know getting annual checkups at those places was a thing. This happened to my 100% healthy happy strong husky without warning so it can happen to anyone.