Video By Ed Bond on Cure for Canine Distemper Now on YouTube!

Dr. Sears Gives A Lecture in Houston Tomorrow

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqeLrXH19g4

An updated version of the first video is now posted on YouTube. This one has some additional video of Galen, Ed's former dog who was treated in the body in February 1977 with Dr. Sears NDV treatment.

What can you do to help bring this treatment to more dogs?

Share this video with your vet and everyone you can, even blog about it, and be sure to leave comments on YouTube.

Thank, everyone!

Special Announcement:

Dr. Al Sears will be giving a lecture on the new treatment for canine distemper from 2 to 6 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24, in Houston, Texas.

E-mail savedistemperdogs@yahoo.com for more info.

If you love dogs and will be in the Houston area I encourage you to attend.

A Little Panic For A Moment but We're Ready

This afternoon I was tying up alot of loose ends and taking more pictures of Carmella when I decided it might be educational to show on my blog what NDV looks like, so I opened my refrigerator and held it up to the light and took a picture of that and another of the dillutant that goes with it.

Everything was going smoothly when I got down to cropping and editing my pictures and when I came to that one as I cropped it and showed it to "fit on screen" I saw the magnified tiny lettering below the title and it said B1, not LaSota strain. I freaked out because this was why the procedure was rescheduled the first time, thinking that would not work, but this time it was too late.

I rushed around writing e-mails to Dr. Sears and Dr. Norwood in a panic asking if they knew whether this strain would do the same job or whether it would hurt her if it was not LaSota strain. Being around 6:30 pm Dr. Norwood was already gone and I figured I may or may not hear from Dr. Sears in time unless he checks his e-mail in the evening. I waited until around 9:00 pm and kept checking and since tomorrow when I got up would probably really be the crack of dawn for him I figured I better call him.

He answered the phone and I told him the predicament. Luckily he said it would still work and that as long as it did not have other viruses mixed with it there would be no risk of a reaction. I took a magnifyer and looked at the little bottle very carefully. There were no other names on it, so we should be OK.

Dr. Sears told me that we should not expect the fast kind of recovery that we saw in the body to take place in the CNS, and that for the kinds of symptoms due to demyelination that Carmella has we should not expect to see noticeable improvement for a minimum of 4-6 months. He said that's how long it takes for the regeneration of myelin and new pathways to be created via stem cells. This in and of itself is exciting because in documents written earlier he is conservative on the prospect of regeneration but focused more on the heading-off of further damage, although it is alluded to in certain paragraphs.

He asked me to stay in touch and I said I would. I was too nervous to stay on the phone for very long.

As an aside; it is uncanny that the theme of regeneration keeps showing up in my life.

Both Carmella and I have been nervous as hell this evening. Everytime I go into the kitchen she wants to chew on me. I tried getting her to eat as much as she could earlier because after 10:00 pm she is not supposed to eat anything and she can just have a little water. I need to take her outside on a leash tonight before I got to bed and in the morning because she will eat anything she can get off the ground, even sticks or dirt if I don't stop her.

Tonight I put together a folder with her medical records, the protocol procedure, and other related papers and took out all the stuff from it that would not be pertinent.

Watching the news coverage of the gas shortage I am still a little nervous about taking a taxi in the morning, as the forecast is that lines are shorter but many stations are still running out. I hope there are enough drivers working tomorrow so that they are not too backed up. I plan to call at 7:00 (two hours before we need to be there) just in case.

I also wish that a friend could sit with me while I'm waiting in the waitingroom to see how the surgery comes out. It feels alot like when my son was in the hospital being evaluated for brain surgery. I was pretty much handling it alone.

Well pretty soon the hard part will be over, the last shreds of the virus will be gone, and Carmella will be out of the woods. I'll be glad when she is home, safe and sound.

http://Giftbearer.etsy.com

Carmella Still Waits for Medical Procedure

Today was down, then up, and then down again. I decided to try Dr. Brantly in one last attempt to appeal to his sense of social responsability, but it turned out he had little, relaying through his receptionist that he would never feel comfortable injecting Newcastle vaccine into the spinal canal (apparently even if not doing so was going to end up killing her). He'd come closest of any of the ones I'd asked, but it seemed as though his initial mindset only got increasingly closed as he ruminated about all the "what ifs". The trouble is he had no alternatives to offer, so who was he to be dead set against this method if it was her only hope. I suspect, knowing this, he offered up a lead at the University of Florida Veterinary clinic, saying maybe they'd attempt it. I made the long-distance call and gave a run-down of Carmella's situation to a woman in the small animal clinic who in turn took down mine and Dr. Sears information and said she'd have a vet call me back by around 5:00 PM. In fact it didn't take near that long. There was a bubbly woman on the other end who sounded hopeful, so I assumed it was good news. Wrong again. She reported to me that all the vets in the neuro department "don't do that", and that "they know nothing about it" stating as others had that it was "still experimental". Well, duh! Of course they'd never heard about it and of course it's "experimental" because nobody has given it a chance to be published. That's why I gave them Dr. Sears' contact information, so that they could find out about it, but did they even call or e-mail him before dismissing this treatment out of hand? No. Well, sorry, but that just doesn't pass with me. Nobody can spreak intelligently against doing something if they won't take the time to investigate it first. That just means that they want to remain ignorant. They sure didn't get their degree in veterinary medicine by having the knowledge pop into their heads by osmosis! They had to put some effort into learning the material. They'd have been kicked out for sure if they came into their professor on the day of an exam and whined, "I don't know anything about this so I'm not doing the exam." They'd have been told pretty fast to get their ass into the library and start reading, and start doing the homework and going to class, or get out; that they don't give honorary degrees in vet school. That kind of obstinate clinging to ignorance is something I cannot tolerate. When I was in college we were expected to back up our argument if we were going to disagree with something, and that's how it should be. In order to really do that one must have some leg to stand on based in logic.

Absence of data or lack of precedence does not immediately render any hypothesis invalid, and it justifies the furthering of study, not the abandonment of it.

I asked the woman on the other end of the line just how we could make this not experimental, and she was not particularly forthcoming, but finally said that they have a seperate research department and that I could speak to them. OK, now we may be getting somewhere, I thought. She did not know the number but had the operator transfer my call. Instead it was picked up by the live answering service who had just come on shift and they did not know the number to connect me to, so I'll have to see if I can find contact information on the website or call tomorrow.

We are pretty much back to square one.

I wrote Dr. Sears and let him know that this turned out another dead end, said we needed him to do conferences, and for some vet, any vet, to publish something.

If Dr. Norwood could at least publish Carmella's experience with NDV in the body that would at least provide one citation that could help legitimize the second half as I am approaching vets. You'd think the way vets are reacting that I was asking them to commit criminal acts, not an act of heroism.

In fact, it is indeed criminal to fail to act in a life-threatening circumstance. A disease is in effect a "natural disaster", but when there is something that can be done to intervene but those who are able do not, that is the true definition of negligence. Does this fact escape those who can but do nothing? Does this not bother their conscience at all?

Maybe they think Carmella is just one dog and they think it's OK to let her languish, turning their attention to those they can easily save by risking nothing, that in the grand scheme of things her life is just not that important to go out on a limb for, but the fact remains that they are aware of the gravity of the situation and they know that this will not go away and that more white matter in her brain is being sacrificed each day they look the other way, and that this dog and this owner have feelings. Would it be OK with them if doctors sat there and let this happen to their wife or child? I don't think so. Maybe they believe that being that attached to a dog is silly and overly sentimental, but if we start picking and choosing whose life is worthy and whose isn't then who is to prevent that kind of calousness from coming home to roost when the grim reaper decides to knock on our door?

These guys keep thinking worst case scenario, but what if this not only had no adverse effects, but was a glowing success, just as it was in the body? What if Carmella went on to live happily ever after once the procedure was completed? Not all "what ifs" have to be negative.

We as a society and as a species must base our lives upon possibility, not be ruled by trepidation. Fear is only useful in the short-term, but it can keep us stuck if it becomes a way by which we live our lives from cradle to grave.

I believe that The Creator did not give us a brain and the technologiy to use it in order for us to choose to ignore that which has been provided. Medical discoveries are a beautiful thing and we should embrace them, not stay trapped in a free-floating fear of progress based on what we don't know. Knowledge is power and with power comes inevitably, responsability. Maybe that is the real crux of the matter; responsability. If we remain ignorant we can always fall back on that ignorance to avoid responsability, but that is to live like Peter Pan refusing to grow up and meet the world head-on, hiding in illusions and creating walls to hide behind.

To believe that the outcome of going outside our comfort zone is always going to be bad is to have a very negative world view. Sometimes trying new things can really add something valuable to our lives. You know what they say, "Nothing ventured, nothing gained." If the answer does not live within the lines then if we want it we must be willing to go outside them to get it.

After a long dry spell I made a sale! (I am getting it ready at the crack of dawn), my Click Beetle bracelet with a really cool Chevron bead in it.

Carmella was restless again today. I let her outside several times in the back yard to run around. When her legs work she is very graceful, like a jackrabbit darting through the thicket, and at times I can almost forget that she is still living with a monster inside her Central Nervous System, one which will ultimately bring her to her knees if it is not stopped in time. For just a short time I am lost in the moment as she glides like a raptor across the landscape, and then she falls, and I realize where I am.

http://Giftbearer.etsy.com

For A Fleeting Moment I Thought I Saw Land...

but it seems it was a mirage. I called PAWS Atlanta today and followed up on the material I'd sent them and asked if the vets they had said might do something like this on Carmella several weeks ago had given them any indication of where they stood. The woman answering the phone thought she'd just given me the name and number of one and did not remember the other. She seemed less enthusiastic today, and said she'd just forwarded it on to their vet but had gotten no response. That seems to be many of the vets' modus operandi lately; no response.

The receptionist gave me the name and number of a vet who used to work for them, another one like Dr. Brantly who did holistic treatment, and she said that maybe he'd be open-minded enough to do it, although she had no idea if he had done spinal taps before.

I took that information and called. An answering machine picked up my message and so I asked if he'd call me back as soon as possible, trying to get as much detail in as possible. His office manager, Carmen, returned my call and then she had him call me. He seemed nice, and actually sounded alot like Dr. Norwood, and he too practiced in the Stone Mountain area. Things sounded good as we were talking, but then he said he used to do spinal taps but hadn't done one in years.

He talked about his muscle-testing and dietary techniques and explained that his were not published in journals either, took Dr. Sears' information, and did sound genuinely interested in the fact that this might be a complete cure (even his techniques could not claim that complete a solution to Distemper), but he said, just as I thought, that probably the reason Dr. Sears could not get published is that alot of drug companies have a financial interest in never letting a true cure see the light of day.

Interestingly, he also said that probably the reason that the most qualified and highly-credentialed vets to do this procedure won't do it is because they are also the most regulated. He's probably right, but that's a real catch 22. If the vets who have the best chance of pulling this off are too afraid of liability then how does the field get past that hurdle in order to introduce any new discovery?

If in order to fly under the radar and become published a new discovery must:

1) Be non-threatening enough to a major percentage of the dominant market share in that category

yet

2) Be interesting and useful enough not to be too redundant or boring to be attractive to the populace

That leaves a very narrow margin. Sure, it could be marketed as a treatment and not a cure (to have it pass the first unofficial requirement), but then it risks being lumped in with lots of other not so legitimate claims that don't work as well, and it would then fall into the wastebasket category of "supportive care".

Not only would that not be accurate, but it could cause it not to pass that second category, and the argument could be made that there are already things out there to help a dog "live comfortably" with the disease for a period of time, plus that those established methods are less invasive.

Taking that tactic could get it squashed before it gets half-way in the door. No, I think the best way to get this on the map is to approach it through Merial, the drug company that manufactures Newcastle Disease Virus Vaccine (the LaSota strain), and to justify it by saying, " Let's be real. Distemper vaccines to prevent the disease only cover so many dogs and there is no realistic way to prevent all cases of Distemper any more than we can completely eradicate all teen pregnancy. We can do all the education and public service messages we want, but all owners will not vaccinate their dogs 100% of the time, and not all vaccinations even work on all dogs. If you really want to stamp out this disease completely it will require a two-pronged approach; direct Distemper vaccination as a preventative measure, and curative vaccination with NDV to treat infected animals. If the number of infected dogs isn't enough to justify it (although I am pretty sure those statistics are highly under-representative) then there are raccoons bringing it into residential areas, foxes, and ferrets, all of which could be candidates for this drug. NDV could be marketed in the wildlife industry as well as used on domestic animals and used by conservation organizations that are currently funded to save species, and by scientists interested in studying natural habitats. Each dose may be very inexpensive, but when you look at using it on that scale, the potential demand/market for such an effective cure begins to look alot more lucrative."

Venus, who's dog was featured on my blog just a few weeks ago wrote me today and she mentioned a Phillipino vet, Dr. Loubinar, who is quite well-respected, and who has a special interest in studying Distemper. She said he has treated 30 dogs there in his country with NDV; at least some of them with the NDV injection into the spinal canal! I posed to her the suggestion that he be the one to lead the way in the veterinary field towards getting a clinical trial funded, that he approach Merial with a proposal, and then publish the findings. I asked her if she had his e-mail address and said that I would do whatever I could to help him connect with Merial (which is based right here in Georgia). If this guy has an interest in Distemper then he would be the perfect one to put in such a proposal. If that's what it will take to get Carmella treated and to stop more dogs from dying, then so be it. There is no rule that says there can't be multiple study sites around the world either. It is not uncommon to do a clinical trial with relatively few subjects into several locations. I've seen studies with 3 sites, each in a different country, and only 5 subjects in each, and those were published! That means that if he were to write the proposal he could have a number of collaborators including some here in the US. His name would come first on the paper but there are often as many as 20 principle investigators on one paper, and they can collaborate on the first and final drafts by e-mail and/or conference call!

With my media blitz underway there may be vets that news reaches who like this idea and would welcome the opportunity to participate if someone else were to submit the proposal.

Carmella is still falling and her restlessness is evident, but she's trying to hang in there. She was so cute today, despite her difficulties. I have been tempted to let her sleep in my bed at night but I'm afraid I'd wake up with no sheets and a room full of stuffing strewn all over the floor; remnants of my comforter.

I'm really looking forward to hearing back from these TV stations and the Journal and Constitution and seeing what shakes out of the bushes.

In the meantime if you'd like to help Carmella, please use the donation button at the upper right of my blog, purchase some great art jewelry from my Etsy shop, or buy an ad underneath the list of "Top Spots".
http://Giftbearer.etsy.com/

Caution...Dangerous Curves Ahead

The weekend was a time of waiting and watching. Carmella seemed her normal jovial self, swaggering up to grab hold of my pants leg, and barking at the teenaged kids down the street playing football or a squirrel that wandered into the back yard and peered back at her through the protection of a window divided only by thin strips of wood.

Once outside on the leash she looked through the chain link fence into the back yard and wanted to run around back there, but the repairman who'd fixed the fence hadn't fixed it very well, as a plank fell off no more than a day after he'd been out here and pronounced it complete. It turned out that the plank had been nailed into air on the other side; not into the cross-board at all, so it was never attached in the first place fell back with the first gust of wind, and left a gaping hole big enough for a dog to escape through. It lay ineffectually with nails facing up in the yard. Having Carmella get out and end up hit by a car or picked up by the pound would be the last thing I needed. He has not been back to repair it, and the rest of the job was pretty sloppy, leaving mounds of uneven cement poured haphazardly into a sink hole that would only continue to sink. Such is life when you don't have the money to pay a "real" contractor, and I'm not in good enough health to attempt to do it myself. I had to settle for now for taking her back there on the leash and walking around with her. She really wanted to run and exercise her legs, but these days my legs aren't up to more than a few feet of that before I give out. We both came inside exhausted.

Carmella lay down and immediately her front leg started jerking again. I found that if I put my hand on it I can feel what seems to be current running through it. It's a very strange feeling. I felt it tonight too.

When I checked my e-mail today there was a message from Dr. Sears. He told me that the NDV CSF procedure would be trickier now that these symptoms (Chorea) had appeared. He believes it is in the early stages of what will eventually progress to either seizures or paralysis, and he said that this can progress slowly after periods of stability or it could progress fast depending on two factors; the genetics of the dog, and what strain of Distemper the dog has.

I called Dr. Brantly's office around 3:00 this afternoon and somebody who answered the phone said he was with a patient so she would have to give him my message when he came out. I told her that Carmella was getting worse in terms of the jerking and that it was more frequent and more obvious now.

Awhile after that a call came in from a receptionist who had not gotten the message but had been asked to call me on behalf of Dr. Brantly based on Friday's information that nothing had changed. He wanted her to tell me that he was not comfortable doing the procedure right now and that he was still researching, and that he would most likely call Dr. Sears tonight after work. He had waited to call him so that he could speak on the subject intelligently. She conveyed at this point that he was afraid of paralyzing or even killing her if he did not do the procedure just perfectly, and upon further questioning it seemed as though he had not done many spinal taps, and maybe appeared overly confident in the beginning when he'd said "I'm pretty sure I'm going to do it", asking that we come in more as a formality than anything else. As the call to action became increasingly imminent it seemed he got cold feet. The problem is, where does that leave Carmella? I hope not out of luck. The ticking time bomb in her head will not merely go away. Somebody will have to do this thing or it's just a matter of time before she dies of this horrible disease.

I wonder why Dr. Johnson didn't do it before she had these symptoms when he had the chance and the skills? If he's done enough spinal taps not to hit the chord then he clearly would have been qualified. I wonder if he ever thinks about her or wonders how she is? Surely he knows the score if left untreated.

And then there was one other vet who could have done it successfully and chose not to.

I am not going to give up. Sooner or later the right vet for the job will reveal him/herself. I just know that it is not God's will for Carmella to die. Anybody who meets her knows very quickly that she is not merely a dog. There is a purpose for her life. Who knows, maybe that purpose is to open the minds of vets to think outside the box, and to change the current thinking about what is cureable and how new medical discoveries become accepted.

Tonight I will be looking at various university vet schools' websites to see what I can find in the way of names of neuro vets. Auburn, and possibly University of Tennessee. I hope I don't have to go that far away, but will if I have to.

Please check out my Carmella Collection of jewelry and many other unique jewelry lines at http://Giftbearer.etsy.com/ , proceeds are going to Carmella's vet bill. Your help is greatly appreciated.

Not So Fast...

With all the false starts in this process I think I may get whiplash. I thought this new vet was about to give the green light to the CSF procedure, that everything was pretty much set to go, but I guess I shouldn't count my chicken vaccine until it's hatched. Just when that might be seems to be anybody's guess from one day to the next.

Saturday was one of those roller coaster rides I wished I could get off, sooner rather than later. First, the trip out there by taxi cost me $22.00 each way after I realized nobody I knew could take us to the consultation and going by cab was the only option. I wasn't about to keep the guy waiting if in fact he was ready to commit, and I worried that rescheduling would only derail whatever mojo had finally been set in motion to bring this thing to a happy conclusion.

The taxi driver got lost on the way over, seeing as the Google map instructions said to turn right where it should have said left. We arrived a little early though so it didn't throw us off schedule, and I took Carmella over to a grassy area on the side of the building so she could pee, which she promptly did, not having liked being cramped up in that small cage on the way there. She was a ball of nervous energet never having been anywhere but home and Dr. Norwood's office since being brought home from that jail cell of a shelter.

The clinic was set back off the main road through a gate that looked like the entrance to a ranch, and the several hundred feet of blacktop which acted as parking lot seemed to swallow up the place. At the back of the property sat a flat rather unassuming one-story building divided in the middle by a quaint little courtyard with a plot of grass framed in rought-iron decorative fencing and a few little sculptures in the center. To the right was the front entrance with glass door and windows slightly tinted. Carmella and I went into a long waitingroom with a tile floor and decorative New Orleans style benches. To the left just beyond was a bird cage with two cocatiels inside perched atop a wooden dowel swing, and on top of the cage a black cat curled in a comfy bed. As we passed it regarded Carmella with large watchful eyes, its head turning with her as she and I walked by the first receptionist desk where a 30-ish woman with slighly longer than shoulder-length brown hair sat typing, just getting off the phone. I approached the desk and said, "Hi, this is Carmella. We have an appointment to see Dr. Brantly."

"Oh yes, " she replied smiling, looking from me to the dog. She came out from behind the desk and reached down to pet Carmella as she jumped up to lick her hand. "Hello, Carmella!" She said enthusiastically reaching into a pocket to pull out a milk bone. Carmella ravenously chewed it into a thousand little pieces, then bolted it down.The receptionist picked up a clipboard and asked, "Have you had a chance to fill out the new patient information sheet?"

"No, not yet" I answered reaching to take it from her. Carmella seemed as if she'd had a shot of adrenalin, and I found it hard to hold the leash and fill out the form too. Several more people came in with their dogs and she could hardly stand being in the room with out bounding over to them. She began whining and barking to get to where they and their owners sat, like a hound intent on the hunt. Trying to get her to sit or lie down had no effect. She was riveted on the other animals. The receptionist asked if I had the form ready and I told her I had managed somehow to get most of it done but that Carmella was pulling so much it made it hard to write. She told me they had some rooms down the hall where I could take her away from the other dogs if I wanted. We followed her down past another receptionist desk and saw two such rooms each containing one of the same ornamental rought-iron and wooden slat benches, and a magazine rack. We entered one and closed the door.

"You can let her run around free in here if you want. I'll be back in to check on you in a little while." The receptionist turned and went out closing the door behind her, and I let Carmella run around but left her leash on just in case somebody came in and she made a beeline for the door. I finished filling out the form as she investigated around the room looking for something to play with. Finding no dog toys in there, Carmella set about trying to chew the tile, the edge of the bench, my foot, her leash, and just about anything she could get her teeth on.

She crawled on her belly under the bench at one end and I heard the sound of something tearing. I looked and saw her come up with a wad of kleenex in her mouth, which she proceeded to tear into little bits of confetti. I leaned down to see a box underneath the bench to my right. Finally I had to put it on top of my napsack in order to save it from being torn to shreds.

It was quite a job to prevent her from tearing the place apart while we waited for the doctor and I hoped he would be out soon because quite frankly I was getting exhausted trying to keep Carmella from doing irreperable damage to the furniture or knawing clean through her leash. It was past 11:00 and still the doctor had not come out, and soon after a vet tech came in to take some information. She sat on the floor against the wall that had photos of Westies hanging on it and wrote in the chart as I recounted the events of the past few weeks. After she'd entered it all she got up to leave, telling me the doctor would be in soon. I waited about 15-20 more minutes with Carmella bouncing off the walls when finally there was a slight knock at the door. I grabbed Carmella's leash, and in came a man who appeared to be in his 30s or early forties with thin red hair, dressed in scrubs. Carmella was sitting on my lap at this point and he reached out to pet her introducing himself as Dr. Brantly. Carmella took this opportunity to lick his hand and when he shook my hand it was full of slobber. Yuck! Christ, where's the Kleenex now, I thought.

I thought he was going to have us go with him into another room but instead sat cross-legged on the floor. Carmella jumped off my lap and went to check him out, wagging her tail. She normally didn't take to men, especially strange men, but she seemed to know that he was no threat and immediately jumped up on him. He inconspicuously looked her over, listened to her heart and checked to see if she had any trouble with her sight by flicking his fingers in front of her eyes, talking to her as if she were just visiting somebody. I'm not sure she was even aware she was seeing a vet and that this was an examination. He certainly was not like any vet I've ever taken any of my dogs to before. He gave her a few more of those milk bones (it seemed as though that was a built in part of the place's approach), and when Carmella decided to chew on his stethoscope he just jokingly told her he couldn't afford another one of those and deftly removed it from sight, called her a "pretty little girl", petted her on the head, and began moving her by the shoulders from side to side to check her balance. She seemed to accommodate well and did not fall, but never stopped moving. I was afraid she might pee on the floor in all the excitement of the new environment but she didn't.

I asked him about the jerking she had when asleep or at rest and he said that it could be from something else other than the Distemper because it was intermittant, and of course she was not showing it then because she wasn't staying still enough.

The eventual and predictable topic came up about not having any journal articles written about thec NDV, and I told him that be that as if may, it was clear to me that this worked because she was at death's door and within two days of the IV being given her pads were already improving, and that I didn't need a bunch of research papers to tell me that my dog was dramatically better, that I'd even gotten pictures to prove it. I pointed out that all she had been given that week other than NDV were antibiotics and we all know antibiotics don't cure Distemper. I told him how ill she had been and how much her energy had come back, how well she was eating, and that she had even grown; a dog who was given a 50/50 chance of making it through the weekend when I'd first taken her to Dr. Norwood.

Dr. Brantly was not able to find several things he was looking for in the chart including Dr. Sears' number, some of the test results, and the concentration of Zithromax in the oral suspension Carmella was currently on.

He said that as he could see no clear-cut neuro symptoms at the time he wasn't in a big hurry to do the procedure, and was worried that it being so long since the NDV was given in the body may have allowed antibodies to form and that if those entered the CSF through blood when he stuck her it might cause an adverse reaction. I urged him to speak with Dr. Sears and ask him if that was likely to happen, and I also said that if that was not likely then I would like to be absolutely sure that the virus was not lurking in there to attack her later when we'd all turned our backs, and he admitted that could happen.

He said if she had been showing overt neuro symptoms in front of him he'd have gone ahead and moved on it expeditiously, but seeing as she looked pretty good he was not so sure he wanted to set it up right now.

He gave me his e-mail address and asked me to have Dr. Sears call him. I told him I would, then Carmella and I went out into the waitingroom where the receptionists were admiring her big ears and regal, arched neck, saying they were almost certain she had Pharoah Hound in her.

One receptionist called the cab I had taken on the way over and was told they could not pick up in that county.

"What do you mean you can't pick up in Gwinnet" she told the driver. "You gave her your card to come back and get her, didn't you? I've never heard anything so ridiculous. So what do you suggest she do? You can't just leave her stranded here!"

The man on the other end seemed unmoved. Finally he gave her the name of another cab company and she called to have one sent over.

I waited for quite some time and finally a large van pulled up and stopped out in the middle of the parking lot. A Jamaaiican man sat in the driver's seat idling the engine, not making a move to get out and help, as I struggled with Carmella's cage in one hand, and my napsack in the other. As I approached I asked if he could open the door. He didn't budge and I asked again.

"Excuse me, could you please open the door for me, I've got a heavy dog and both hands are full". He responded that I should just open the door. I told him I couldn't and tried to hold both up where he could see. Rather than getting out of his seat he told me just to put my bag in the front seat. I really didn't want to do that because he looked kind of questionable and unkempt, fearing he might take off with my wallet, but seeing as there was not much else I could do I took the risk, then opened the door and hauled Carmella's carrier and myself up into the back seat, then quickly grabbed my napsack and put it safely at my feet. I was nervous the whole way home thinking it looked as though he was under the influence of some illegal drug (something more than just weed). The van was in disrepair and the door handles looked as though they might come off in my hand.

I was thinking all the way home, "All this and still no appointment for the procedure! JFC!"

We made it home in one piece and I was glad to be home, as was Carmella. I let her out of her carrier, took her out on the leash, then after she'd had a chance to go to the bathroom, brought her back in. I checked my e-mail and there was a message from Dr. Sears saying he'd been in touch with Dr. Norwood, and that he was happy with the treatment and that Carmella was doing well, that he'd left a message for Dr. Brantly, and ending the e-mail saying he is very interested in following the case.

I wrote back asking a number of questions including some of the things Dr. Brantly had brought up. I also asked him how we'll know when she's cured for sure.

I took some new pictures of Carmella and added some of them to my Indie Public account to a photo album.

When I logged onto Etsy I found that I had made a sale! This was none too soon, as I am going to be getting that bill any day now (including a $75.00 charge for the consultation on Saturday).

Check out my Etsy shop at http://Giftbearer.etsy.com/ all proceeds going towards Carmella's vet bill.

The First Signs Of Improvement!

You are not going to want to miss this update! Carmella showed her first noticeable signs of improvement in only two days after the administration of the Newcastle's Virus Vaccine protocol!

I spoke with the vet tech this morning and he informed me that the deteriorating pads of her feet were markedly better! The office is only open half a day on Saturday but I was dying to find out how she was doing, and this news really lets me know that I'm on the right track.

If anyone assumes Distemper is hopeless then you might just have to revise your thinking because this works!

Now all we have to do is find a neuro vet to deliver the Newcastle's Disease Vaccine to the Central Nervous System to get rid of any remaining virus in that area, and finish up the twice a day antibiotic injections for her pneumonia.

Dr. Sears is due back from his trip to California tomorrow, and I hope, will make phone contact with Dr. Norwood on Monday.

Dr. Norwood is going to try to get a committment from a vet at a practice he knows about on the other side of town and I hope the way will be paved for us to finish the neuro part of this as early in the week as possible.

The longer these consults take to agree to do the procedure the more she runs the risk of neurologicasl disease-progression, as the serum given by IV does not cross the blood-brain barrier.

Think of the brain and spinal chord as a sealed chamber. Distemper accessed that space via the lungs, but it appears it doesn't work the other way around when treating the body.

It is neurological disease-progression that eventually kills the dog in late stage distemper. That's why it is so vitally important that this second part of the protocol be done as soon as we can get it scheduled. The vet doing it must be skilled in doing spinal taps because the delivery of the substance is done through an LP needle at the base of the skull in an area dangerously close to the spinal chord. If that spinal chord is nicked it can result in paralysis or worse.

Carmella will be placed under general anesthesia, and some spinal fluid will be withdrawn to be analyzed for the level of virus found in it, then the Newcastle Vaccine substance is injected via the same route. This should rid her of any remaining virus threatening her Central Nervous System. She could have seizures or temporary paralysis afterwards, not as a reaction to the procedure, but a delayed reaction to whatever the virus has already done. She will need to be watched closely during the following days and given supportive care until she is stable. Once she is over that crucial period the danger will have passed and she can focus on regaining any function, strength, and weight she lost over the course of the disease while it was active.

The literature says she may have a few quirky things over a 30 day period after this procedure and then any fluctuations should settle down, then at around 50 days she will start to make gains. Her rehabilitation could take up to a year to become complete.

Be sure to check out the handcrafted jewelry in my online shop. For a full week receive 10% off on your purchases. Doing so will help pay down the bills that are piling up for Carmella's medical care. Instead of sending your money to a shelter why not help a dog directly and get a piece of wearable art in return that you will treasure for years to come. http://giftbearer.etsy.com/

Tears of Joy
(from the Carmella Collection)

Too often it is the owner who ends up cleaning up the mess the shelter created when it failed to give adequate booster vaccinations to young puppies like Carmella. I can almost guarantee you that no shelter is going to go to these lengths once the damage has been done. You can be a part of the solution while you buy quality art jewelry you can be proud of.

Cascading Pea Sprouts
(From the Carmella Collection)

Carmella's Big Day!

Well the moment of truth has finally arrived. The vet called me this afternoon after I'd brought Carmella over there this morning, and told me he was finally able to find a vet supply company that had Newcastle Disease Vaccine, LaSota Strain. I had no idea that there would be any difficulty finding or buying it, but he encountered alot of barriers along the way. Some companies would only sell it in mass quantities that he could never use up in his own practice, and many other suppliers were actually out of stock.

After much searching he was able to locate one good source and they are going to overnight ship it to him to arrive tomorrow morning. It is arriving none too soon, as the rate of her decline is making this an emergency situation very fast.



Carmella didn't eat very well this morning, leaving half a can of dogfood sitting in her bowl, and still would only drink yogurt juice. Before taking a taxi to the vet's I gave her as much yogurt juice as I could, and took her outside to go to the bathroom. The cab company now charges $5.00 if you don't have your dog in a cage and $1.00 additional if it is caged. I put one of her pillows in there so that she would be comfortable, and she crawled right into it on her own.

Once at the vet's this morning I spoke with a man in the waiting room who was there to have his grey and white Schitzu groomed and we talked for awhile as we waited for the receptionist. He mentioned to me that his wife had once bought a dog from a pet shop that was sick and he insisted she take it back and get her money back although she was attached to it. She finally relented although she really didn't want to, and they did return her money. I told him that the shelter I got Carmella from had you sign a disclaimer, but that even if they hadn't I could never return her as if she was a defective product from a store. I picked her out from a long list of dogs I'd seen both online and at various shelters after several months of being extremely picky. When I found her, that was the dog I wanted, there was no doubt about it, and it would take a thousand armies to tear us apart. I found myself wanting to ask him if he would trade in his wife or his child for a new model the first time they got really sick. His story left me feeling very uneasy, as I knew it was a sign of the times. I looked at Carmella in her carrier and thought "No way would I ever do that to you". She looked back at me and I could tell she knew it too. This dog would follow me to hell and back and I am prepared to return the favor. If that made me a relic, I thought, then so be it. We are all going to be old and get sick one day, and I would hope that when that time comes all of us will have somebody by our side willing to do whatever is necessary, and I am a strong believer that we help create the world we will one day have to live in, so we'd best make it a compassionate one.




After about 15 minutes a nurse came out and called me to bring Carmella into a room. She asked me how she was doing and I filled her in on the sudden hardening of her pads last night and her reduction in apetite this morning. She had been the first one in that office I'd spoken with on the phone before the first visit and remembered my saying that Carmella looked like a Dingo, and she commented on that again, saying how extremely cute she was. I told her I hoped that Dr. Norwood had the serum and was ready to treat her because I was really worried with the developments of the night before that she would suffer neurological damage. Time was ticking away on my beautiful puppy's life, each minute lost, like a leaf of lettuce being peeled away, leaving a bare and vulnerable center which was her life force. The nurse looked at me from behind black-rimmed glasses and I thought I saw a slight tearing of her eyes, fleeting, but nevertheless very real and very human. I knew that she would take extra special care of my best buddy, as she saw in her what I do; that majestic spirit, that awe-inspiring presence like a tamed wild animal which made it impossible to resist her.

The nurse told me that Carmella was the first dog with Distemper they'd ever had in their practice and that she'd heard about it but had never seen if first-hand until now. She told me that some time ago several shelters had been shut down after an outbreak was reported on the news, but they seemed to be different ones than the one Carmella came from. Even so, it just goes to show that this disease clearly has not been eradicated in this country.

I wonder whether dogs are getting it from wild animals displaced by the destruction of the forest. I remember recently reading about a breed not yet recognized by the American Kennel Club called the Carolina Dog which is thought to be related to the Dingo and wonder now if maybe some Dingoes were released or got loose after having been brought over from Australia. If they'd mixed with domestic dogs then there is an off chance that Carmella could actually be mixed with Dingo, although how recently that would have been in the bloodline is a mystery to me. For that matter I guess someone with a taste for exotic pets could have brought one over recently (I hear you can order just about anything over the internet these days if you can get it cleared through customs), a dog like that could have bred with a domesticated dog. If one became a stray and was not current on their vaccines the puppies may not have inherited any immunity from the mother and contracted the disease or got it from the mother (already infected). Who knows? In any case it sounds plausible to me given the current state of our environment. If bears and wolves show up in suburbia why not Dingos or half-breed Dingos? One has to wonder where these diseases re-emerge from after they were assumed to be almost non-existant in the US nowadays.

After returning home I immediately got online and checked to see whether Dr. Sears had received the message and my vet's phone number to call him. but found out later from Dr. Norwood that he had still not called.

Upon speaking with my vet by phone we decided that Carmella should stay for 7 days in which time all the intensive treatment could be completed, she could be observed closely for any adverse effects, and have medical intervention close at hand just in case it should be needed. This made good sense since I don't have a car and there is only one person I know who could take me over there in the evenings after work, but nobody in the morning, as she will need 2 antibiotic shots a day to fully clear up the pneumonia after receiving the Newcastle's Disease Virus Vaccine I.V. and spinal tap procedure injecting the second dose into the Central nervous system to be sure all traces of Distemper virus are eradicated from brain and spinal chord.

The doctor advised me that because the serum he was using was bird-based rather than dog-based there could be some risks associated with that, but admitted he had really no way fast enough to find a donor dog in the time-frame Carmella would need, so we would have to proceed with the pre-made serum. At this point we have nothing to lose because left untreated she would surely die. I had hoped Dr. Sears would have been able to contact Dr. Norwood in time to send him the dog-based stuff, but with Carmella's recent disease-progression that one or two days might be too long to wait.

After our conversation on the phone, Dr. Norwood faxed me copies of Carmella's test results in case Dr. Sears got in contact with the guy working with him (Daveyo) before he called him.

Then I checked back with Daveyo on the two Distemper messageboards and found that he'd gotten back to me with some more instructions and information about what to expect in the days following the treatment, based on Carmella's current condition.

He said that it is very possible that after both initial shots Carmella might start having seizures or become paralyzed. The first 48 hours after the treatment the immune system goes through a storm, killing the Distemper virus. Soon after, a delayed reaction of the damage that was ensuing becomes fully apparent. This could take about 50 days to start resolving. He assured me that if she does suffer the paralysis it was easier to heal than if she had seizures and not to panic. This sounds very similar to what I was told about my own autoimmune disease protocol (the worstening before it gets better due to a Herxheimer reaction; temporary exascerbation of symptoms while the bacteria is flushed through the tissues and out of the body).

In this case we are dealing with a virus rather than bacteria, but I suspect the same thing is happening when shedding the virus as it's killed. It could be that the toxins released on Distemper's way out of the dog result in increased inflammation of the tissues and organs, and that accounts for the increase in symptoms indicative of which areas had been affected before eradication.

Since my vet has not done this before he told me he'd do his best and do everything in his power but that he couldn't guarantee anything.

I cannot say that I'm not worried, but Carmella's silent strength is part of what endeared me to her in the first place and it is that strength that will give her the ability to beat this virus. She knows that I'm not going to give up on her and that she's home and I'm not going anywhere.

If I have to work with her every day for the next year to get her functioning back to normal, I'm prepared to do that, but she may surprise us all and bounce back alot sooner.

There is something about her that doesn't quit, determined to live to see the day that she can jump into my arms (until she's too big), run, and play, and chew on her toys, chase a ball and bring it back, eat voraciously, and enjoy a long drink of water, to breathe in the warm summer air without coughing or congestion, to learn tricks, and go for long walks, basking in the sun, her reddish-brown fur healthy and glistening.