Thank you everyone for your replies. I'll get those tests done. Does just the thyroid panel show all three conditions? And why when I've Googled this stuff does it not even mention that it can kill your dog??
A few more questions and some background please?
Jenna had been seen by her vet about two weeks ago, and wound up diagnosed with atopy. She'd had stomach gas/itching and chewing for a week before that and had developed 'pimples' on her chin and little brown spots at the base of her hair on the neck and genitals that I'd thought were mites. She also chews/licks her feet. He took a scraping, I think, and said no mites. He didn't think it was food allergies. We were given sebozole shampoo to use for two weeks. All it did was dry her skin and gave her no real relief from the itching, plus now her coat is thinning/becoming brittle and she's lost fur on her stomach and the pits of her legs and tail just under the base. (Itching/chewing spots) Come to think of it she did have some red 'rashy' spots there also, just a few. Her skin on her stomach just ahead of the rear hock and under her front leg pits is wrinkling and looks like the skin on an old lady's hands. There are also some veins there I didn't see before...but not a lot of them and they are more red than green. Her genital area now seems to have more of those brown spots, moving to the inside areas and her rectum as well. I notice her inner elbows have reddish patches where she's licked at them that I can clear up with neosporin, but now I'm remembering seeing these before....
I'm wondering if she began displaying subtle signs of one of these problems back in early summer. She'd been seen for possible UTI and given amoxicillin but when they handed her back to me she had this 'road rash' in her inner elbow, I'd chalked it up to them having to hold her tightly for the urine aspiration then...but now I see it's where she's been chewing and licking herself there.
Anyway, her doctor has prescribed oral ketoconazole (for yeast dermatitis) and prednisone for itching (which hasn't been as bad since I switched her foods from DVPNB to Blue Buffalo on a hunch.)
My question is; if she's actually had Cushing's or hypothyroid developing all this time (no testing mentioned for either of these by the vet, he's stuck on atopy) then wouldn't the prednisone (which I haven't started yet) make these diseases worse or screw up the tests? And what are the implications to her recovery as long as we test and confirm now if this may have been going on since summer?
I keep going over other behaviors for the last few months...yes it does seem like she's hungry more often, sleeping more, perhaps a bit more water consumption/urine output than in the summer, (still only goes twice a day though...just takes her a bit longer) and what also distresses me is her hair changes and that she seems more whiny at times than usual. Lots of what I call 'nose whistling.' Picking her up to take her for a walk makes her groan as if her stomach hurts. It bulges from time to time and the skin seems oddy colored when this happens, but by morning it's gone. (She used to nibble dry food a few times a night, we've stopped that now in case that was overfeeding.) She doesn't enjoy me carrying her as much but all this time I've thought it was due to how itchy she'd become and that her skin was sensitive. There's also some sensitivity to touch on her lower back, but since I tend to carry her like a baby, I thought perhaps I'd made her back sore holding her that way.
We live in Alaska and it's brutally cold and dark now, so these are also good reasons for her to be more tired and hungry and dried out. Our humidity doesn't even register. But I don't see how Cushings or thyroid could be mistaken for dermatitis?
I'll call my vet to schedule the tests. I just hope we're not too late. And if hubby doesn't like it, thinks I'm being paranoid...tough.
Thanks again for reading. Sorry it was so long but more things kept coming to me and at least now I have them all written down somewhere. Since her itching is not as bad I'm holding off on the prednisone unless otherwise indicated. Seems to me the ketoconazole would counteract it's effects anyway from what I've read.
If anyone feels like sending vibes for Jenna it would be much appreciated.
