Kaylee's follow-up appointment

Well, we spent two hours at the vet's last night (most of it waiting for bloodwork to be done), and the upshot is that Kaylee is doing very well. She's gained five pounds and is now at 37.5 pounds. We're going to try to get her up to 42, where she's at her best. Luckily, she loves loves LOVES the venison & potato restricted diet (Royal Canin/IVD) she's on, so she's eating like a little horse. And she likes banana chips and dried apples for treats, both of which are a good hypoallergenic choice of treat. She misses her cookies, though, so I'm going to try to mess around with some potato flour and see if I can come up with something she'll like.

We've messed around with her meds and started her (this morning) on Imuran to help with the inflammatory bowel disease (the link has an excellent section on IBD in shar pei). It's an expensive medicine, and I have to wear gloves to give it to her, since it's so strong. But it lets us taper down off the prednisone, which is very good, and we should be able to taper the Imuran down, too, after a month.

We're still giving her the supportive medications for her liver, especially since Imuran can be hard on the liver. For that, it's Denosyl, Actigall and Marin. She hates the Marin, since it's a gigantic tablet, but she'll let me shove it down her throat eventually. And since we're now only giving one med that can't be given with other meds or food (the Denosyl), we're able to get up at the decadent hour of 5:30 a.m.!

So all in all, she's doing as well as can be expected, maybe (knock on wood) a little better. I'm pleased!

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