My Little Friend is On the Mend

Carmella's paws look alot better after 5 days on the antibiotics!

The sores are beginning to look more like callouses

and what used to be raw, oozing flesh has now dried up alot

and the pads seem to be returning to more their normal color.

I'm not sure what this yellow coloring is though. It almost looks as though she stepped in pollen and it soaked into her pores, but I think it has something to do with the infection. Hopefully this will go away also.

Even Carmella's face is clearing up. It turns out that what Dr. Norwood thought was the remnants of the mange was really the bacteria. It seemed to be taking inordinately long for the lesions on the side of her face to heal, but I see more hair growing where it hasn't grown for weeks or months! Her eyes are also not getting goop in them constantly as they were before.

Her crotch still has a few little pustules but not near as many as before.

As you can see, her ears look better and the scabbiness is gone from her cheek!
Her snout where the whiskers are is still kind of red, but it is getting better. I hope it will look alot better by the end of the weekend.


She's not itching near as much and so is not licking, scratching, and biting herself except for every once in awhile. If this keeps up I may be able to take her cone off pretty soon!

I just added some more jewelry to my Etsy store. So far nobody has used the repeat customer sale, so if you like something you see I have things in a number of price-ranges, so go ahead and pick some of your favorites up and take them home. I've spread this out for a full month to make it easy for most people over several pay periods to fit this into their budget. I hope you all are seeing my shop and checking it often and that you will become regular customers if you're not already.

Those who have already bought jewelry from me can get the 20% discount on your very next purchase, and remember that once you have bought the first time you have all the way through Mother's Day to buy as much as you want at 20% off! If somebody's birthday is coming up but it's not for a few more months then why not just buy their gift early and keep it on hand while the discount period lasts. Now's the time to jump on it and make it work for you!

http://Giftbearer.etsy.com/

I recently finished a bunch of stuff to send off to VIX Emporium which will be having it's Grande Re-Opening after it's owner gets back from maternity leave.
It looks like I'll just barely have enough money to mail the package.

Carmella Cone-head Fights Unseen Enemy

Just as my own health seemed to give me some reprieve and I thought that Carmella was on the way to total health something tiny but deadly attacked her feet with a vengeance. Getting one's butt kicked by something microscopic is not a pleasant way to start a new week and Carmella found herself compelled to lick the bottom of her paws between the pads, only making a raging infection worse.

Nothing I had on hand was any match for this miniscule, aggressive creature. It seemed her paws just got redder and redder and increasingly blistered and her face around the whiskers looked as though it had been burned in a fire.

Now I know why they refer to these things as "opportunistic" infections. The little bastards seemed to take full advantage of the fact that Carmella was licking and thus adding moisture to her sore paws. The more she licked the more it itched, and the more it itched, the more she licked. Then one of her back feet started bleeding again last night. Giving her a bath with aloe shampoo only seemed to provide temporary relief and then this morning she was back to licking between her toes every 5 seconds.

I took her to the vet this afternoon and asked him whether she might have a fungal infection since we already had her on an ointment that was a mix between an anti-bacterial and steroid and the flea drops that also are supposed to treat the mange, both of which failed to prevent this current flair-up.

Dr. Norwood thought about it a minute and then said that is a possibility, and/or it might be some sort of antibiotic-resistant bacteria she picked up from the ground outside. Oh, God, no! That's all we need.

I asked if he could culture it and he told me that there is a very good test available (although there is some costliness involved) that will identify the type of microbes she has and actually test what grows with certain antibiotics and other drugs so that we can be absolutely sure what will and will not work against these bugs. If it is bacterial, or fungal we should know what it is and how to treat it in about 10 days.

Although I was not looking forward to adding to my already towering vet bill on Care Credit, I figured this looked like a "pay kind of big now or pay HUGE later" situation, so choosing the lesser of two evils I bit the bullet and forged ahead.

Knowing that there are lots and lots of antibiotics and at least as many microbes, we could spend the next 5 years guessing and that could REALLY run into some money. Like they say, "A stitch in time saves nine".

The female vet tech was working today and remarked that Carmella looked really good (other than her feet and around the mouth). She weighed her and commented that she was down about two pounds (43) on this visit, but that it probably wasn't anything to worry about as changes in exercise could account for some small bit of weight-loss. I have been taking her for walks lately in addition to her usual running around in the back yard. I hope she hasn't picked up anything nasty from the street.

Dr. Norwood took the culture, which Carmella wasn't thrilled about, as she pulled her raw back left foot away reflexively and whined slightly as he obtained some material on a Q-tip and dropped it into a small test tube to be sent to the lab.

Then he recommended she have one of these plastic collars to keep her from licking her feet, and prescribed some more Entederm ointment, some other liquid called Conofite (an anti-fungal medication), and said to continue the Pro-Meris flea drops on an every- 2-week schedule for awhile more. He covered all bases and said that at least while we're waiting for the results of the culture she should not get any worse with all three of these medications and the collar to keep her from licking her wounds.

I walked out of there with almost another $200 tacked onto my Care Credit. Gwen had put it in for 3 months same as cash but upon reflection thought maybe she could have done it as 6 months. I told her that I sure hope this works because I can't get reimbursed anymore for mange by Carmella's insurance, and the new year doesn't renew her yearly limit until July. If this turns out to be something new then it might be covered then if it is still going on, but I really hope it will be all over with by July. It seems like just when I think Carmella will have no more health problems something else happens.

She will have to go around for awhile with what looks like a satellite dish on her head, but maybe that will give the area a chance to dry out so that it doesn't continue to fuel whatever these vicious beasts are feeding off her flesh.

http://Giftbearer.etsy.com/