Carmella Gets Neurological Referral

Today the phone rang. It was Jocelyn from Dr. Norwood's office calling to let me know the paperwork had been completed for Carmella's referral to Ga. Veterinary Specialists. It had been a long time coming and I was relieved that finally we would get to the bottom of the myelin damage causing her constant jerking and atrophy of the leg.

As it turned out transportation was really the biggest barrier because I had only two people I could ask and finances and health problems were preventing one of them from driving more than two trips, and the other one's job prevents her from going until later in the day, and even then only on Thursday and Fridays because she takes work home with her three of 5 days every week.

The policies dictating when GVS does certain things narrowed it down even further, but finally after several hours of vascillation and negotiation we came up with a workable plan and set the date for March 18th at 11:45 AM. Carmella will see  veterinary neurologist that day for an exam and most likely will have to come back another day for the MRI and any other tests.

I spoke on the phone with a very nice woman who told me that although they usually don't do this it's possible that something can be arranged the same day once I get her in there and talk to the vet if the radiology people can fit her in that day. This has taken so long to arrange that it would be nice to get it all out of the way in the same day, especially since I won't be picked up for several more hours after her exam.

Apparently they will put her under general anesthesia during the MRI so that she won't move, and it takes 2-3 hours because the MRIs they use for dogs are less powerful than the ones used for humans so it takes longer to get all the pictures. The neurologist might order other tests and will give me a price quote ahead of time once it's established all the tests she's going to need.

Since the time I called over a year ago when Carmella needed the CSF procedure they have added a new neurologist that used to be an intern and decided to specialize. I was thrilled to hear this, as the other one wasn't very interested in helping Carmella before. I hear this one is very open-minded, so that is who I made the appointment with.

I took some really cute pictures of Carmella tonight. As she often is she was chewing on something in many of them.

For some reason she seemed to be particularly hyper tonight and wanting to chew on my arms. I threw a rubberized dumbell for her to fetch that she'd stripped of the outer surface long ago, and I played tug of war with her for awhile until we both were worn out.

Hopefully she'll sleep well tonight after all that exercise and won't jump off the bed at the crack of dawn as she sometimes does when I'm not awake enough to get up.

This morning was one of those rare days that she stayed curled up beside me until around 12:00 noon. I needed the rest anyway after the long hours I'd worked the day before getting a wedding order completed.

This morning I wasn't feeling so well and needed to stay in bed until the pain in my back, stomach, and legs subsided.

I had also stayed up around the clock one night getting a bunch of my jewelry ready to go to a store. I am going to prepare another batch this month also in hopes that I can make a decent amount of money this month. There will be alot of money to raise given the upcoming medical expenses for Carmella.

I see it is 3:30 in the morning already so I'll get this posted and then get some sleep and promote this entry later on today. If any of you find it in the meantime please feel free to post your comments! If you aren't yet following and you would like to keep up with Carmella's progress please do so. Things should be getting very interesting in the coming weeks and months!

Document, Document, Document

Now that Carmella is beginning her recovery stage I've been giving some thought to what needs to be done to document her improvement for the medical journal article to come. I am so excited that Carmella is going to be a part of saving other dogs' lives and want us to do this right so that her case history will be taken seriously by the vets who will be on the review panel of whichever journals it will be submitted to, and vets in practice, after publication.

We're still trying to locate a lab in the US that can test the strain of Distemper in her spinal fluid. The portion for that test is still sitting in Dr. Muller's refrigerator or freezer while we try to work out the logistics. Luckily frozen it can stay viable indefinitely.

I spoke with the pathology lab at UGA and got a much better reception there than we had in the clinical section earlier. There happened to be a vet there who has spent most of his career studying Distemper and he was quite interested when I told him about Carmella and the treatment she had. Although he didn't know anyone but the same Italian source I had who tests for the strain, he seems to have relationships with several major Veterinary research centers around the country and he may be instrumental in pitching this treatment to them, which in turn could get somebody interested in doing clinical trials. I gave him Dr. Sears' e-mail and the link to his dog-based serum and we exchanged e-mail addresses.

He was unaware that the CDC had Canine Distemper on their list of Bioterrorist agents or that they'd documented 13 seperate strains, and was a little shocked, stating that they are mainly an agency for humans and that Distemper can't be caught by humans. I said that was my understanding too, but I have always wondered why they had that on a bioterrorist list. Who knows, maybe it was about potential threat to our food supply, not directly to us. I'm not sure if cows and chickens catch it or not.

Then I called The University of Tennessee. It took a few calls back and forth to reach the right person, but a woman vet called me back from their imunology lab and told me that they don't do the test there either but that she'd try to help me find a lab that did and that I should hear from her tomorrow. She thought she remembered something being done along those lines in Colorado. I hope she does have a good lead there because that would be much cheaper than sending it all the way to Italy!

This blog will keep an important record of Carmella's progress, but I have been thinking also that in addition to the other tests Dr. Norwood and I spoke of the other day maybe she should have regular MRIs to show any changes in her white matter that is damaged by the disease, causing the jerking. If brain and nerve tissue can be regenerated then advanced imaging techniques such as MRI could really show dramatic improvement, and one thing about pictures is they are hard to dispute.

Carmella was bursting with energy today. I think she felt better than I did as the first half of the day I was feeling very groggy, had junk draining down the back of my throat, a headache, and my stumache was churned up. I had this achey, itchy feeling too throughout my body. I needed to stay in bed to get that under control and Carmella was especially feisty and kept wanting to go out of the kitchen.

She was chewing on me again as though she had such an insatiable urge to chew that her toys and sticks weren't enough. My bare feet seemed to be a magnet for her needle-sharp teeth. Sometimes she reminds me of a shark always with her mouth open looking for some flesh to bite into.

I went out several times with her into the back yard and threw sticks for her to fetch. Eventually she grew bored with that and set her sights on chomping into an arm, hand, or leg.

She seemed to have lost her chew stick that she'd been working on for the past month, so I got out another one for her and she set about breaking it in.

That baby bird smell is gone now. It seemed to last just about 2 1/2 months. Too bad because it was a nice smell. She doesn't smell bad now, but the baby bird smell was especially sweet.

The necklace donated by Tracey sold on Ebay on Sunday night for $22.00, and another donation came in via the blog donation button yesterday too. I sent off another payment today toward the vet bill.

Those of you thinking of doing some advertising, don't forget you can purchase ad space on my blog for only $5.00. Those little banners stay there until they bump one by one off the list, and there are lots of slots left to be filled.

The woman from the rubber stamp company got back to me and I sent her the specs I wanted to see some of my pictures in round and some in square or rectangular shapes.

I'm really looking forward to getting started on my new line.

In addition to the pictorial fine silver jewelry I'm planning with Carmella on it and some other scenes I found some really neat seedpods on a tree over the weekend that are going to be covered in fine silver and made into jewelry as well. They are great for Halloween, as they look like lanterns or gourds of some sort. Their natural color is a kind of burnt sienna or burnt umber which I think I will try to re-create with liver of sulfer when I put on the patina at the end.

http://Giftbearer.etsy.com/