Maggie's Canine Hepatitis Treatment

First off, I want to thank everyone who has donated and shared and sent the positive thoughts thus far. I was in no way expecting the response from everyone, and though we've not reached the target (yet), with any luck well get closer. Also, it looks like the final hit has a good chance of being lower than originally estimated, and I've been able to lower the target, thankfully.

With that out of the way, onto the 'Good News/Not-so-good news' part of the update.

Good news first: Maggie is home!

Tuesday night/Wednesday morning in a bit of desperation, the vets added a steroid anti-inflammatory to her IV meds, after which her jaundice almost entirely cleared up, dropping the levels of excess bile and such in her blood stream by about 80%. Her energy went up, as well as her appetite and desire to eat/drink on her own. At that point the decision was made to let her come home, and I would continue to medicate her for the next two weeks, after which we will do more blood tests, and go from there. She was happy to come home, see her brother, and sleep on her couch, however....

Not so good news: ...we're not out of the woods yet.

As well as she has been doing, her levels of liver enzyme in the blood are still abnormally high. Like, about 5x normal, at best. Part of the levels can be ascribed to the medications she has had to be given (the meds cause those levels to go up, and the numbers reported have to be estimted down somewhat to make for that issue). As such, we're not knowing whether or not the med therapy is entirely successful, and won't know until blood tests are done in a week or so.

The fact is, that while the original diagnosis was that it was likely ICH, the fact is that the vets now admit we don't know what the cause for this is. Her lack of reacting to the original therapies point away from the viral hepatitis, and the prevailing thought is that this could be either exposure to a toxin somehow, or a chronic hepatitic condition that may never go entirely away. The lack of knowing completely has led to a therapy that the vet called "throwing the pharmacy at her".

She's currently on three meds: Metronidazole (antibiotic that also helps as an anti-nausea), Prednisone (steroid anti-inflammatory), and Ursodiol (to help with the excess bile issue that led to her jaundice, etc). The pro being that she is likely getting better, but the con being we may never know the full reason, and if it is chronic, well, this will be ongoing issues.

That said, no specialist has been needed (at least yet), so this has turned out to be a better outcome than it would have been, and as such, I've dropped my target amount. Her final vet bill (see below) was $2321 and change, plus her Ursodiol prescription that had to be purchased at a Walgreens (for a touch over $94). As such, I changed the target to $2500, and hopefully there will be no specialist needed.

So there is the update so far, and with any luck, there won't be anything other work/vet visits to do other than the followup blood tests.

Thanks to everyone for the gifts so far to help out with this. It's very gratifying to see all of the help and people who came out of the woodwork to show that they care about the dogs and me, even those that have never met them. It melted away my cynicism, just a little. ;)

Again, thank you so much, your help and caring have made this a great deal easier to deal with, both financially and emotionally, and I'm not sure how well I would have weathered this without your help. As much as it goes against how much I want to be self-reliant in as much as possible, it was hard to swallow my pride and do this, and I am so appreciative of those who have helped out.

Thank you all so much.

EDIT: I wanted to add in here that if somehow we go above and beyond the amount needed to cover this, any remainder I will use to support and donate to another worthy campaign here on GFM.

I am in no way in this for personal gain, and I think it's only fair to pass the goodwill I've received on to someone else who is likewise needing it.