About

About me: Sithean, a teenager living in a thirty-something body. I’m happily married with two dogs and 1.25 cats. OK, just one cat, but her rear is the size of a buick, and I think that should count for something.

Abigail is my beloved short-haired dachshund. This breed is also known (in America) as a doxie, and I sometimes live vicariously through Abigail’s nutty, stubborn, laughable antics, hence the proxy.

My sweet Abigail has GME (granulomatous meningoencephalitis). As the vet explained it, it’s sort of like MS for dogs. It’s an autoimmune disorder, and it’s fatal. We’ve known about it since August of ‘07, and she’s done wonderfully, until recently.  Back when she was first symptomatic, things were really awful. Horrible. Her back legs started going out on her, and she was very incoordinated. She would cry out if you touched her the wrong way about the head and neck, and she couldn’t get comfortable, even to sleep. She had seizures, wherein she would vocalize, sounding like she was shrieking in agony. This was a horrifying sound to wake to, night after night. She couldn’t lift her head up at all, and she stopped eating. We were beside ourselves, and after several vet visits, a $1k myelogram, and an overnight stay at the doggie hospital, she was diagnosed with GME.

Her veterinarian is an internal medicine specialist, and I think a great deal of him. He has extensive experience with this terrible disease, and placed her on a regimen of cyclosporine and prednisone. Prednisone is a steroid medication, which helps to decrease inflammation, as well as making Abigail hungry and thirsty non-stop, and agitated at times. Cyclosporine is an autoimmune medication, because this illness, very simply put, is Abigail’s body attacking itself. Cyclosporine is used, for example, with some organ transplants, to keep rejection at bay.

For the last year, every two months, her vet has decreased her dosage of these two medicines by a very small amount. Each time we did this I would panic, watching and worrying that my sweet dog would relapse. He told me a few times that once they relapse, it is harder to treat. This goes through my mind a lot these days.

In May of ‘08, she was down to 25mg of cyclosporine on odd days, alternating with 5mg of prednisone on even days. Wait…reverse that. It’s been a year, and I still get it backwards! (I have a calendar printed out, so no worries.) I checked in with the vet in July, and he was very happy with her progress, and expressed his worry that she may have relapsed by now. You see, the seizures indicate Abigail has a lesion on the brain. She has generalized GME, which is the worst kind.

We decided to keep her on that low-dose regimen for a year, and I was to check back in with him as needed. I was quite happy at her progress, and very thankful that she was doing so much better.

2 weeks ago (beginning of August ‘08), Mister and I noticed that her back legs were possibly becoming wobbly. I thought it was all in my head, and I watched her closely for 2 days. It became clear that she was relapsing, and I cried my heart out. I spoke with her vet at the first possible opportunity, and we’ve started her back on the original dose she was on one year ago. Right now, things are on a week-to-week basis, and I’m keeping in close contact with her specialist. There have been no seizures, no neck pain, nothing else other than the incoordination, and thank God. I needed an outlet to write, laugh, cry and vent about this sweet creature and her ordeal, and Doxie Proxy was born. I’ve web-journalled since well before “blogs” were even a word, and decided to put the last 5 years on this site, to consolidate things.

Update 02.01.09: She has relapsed again, and had another myelogram. The internal medicine specialist thought her symptoms might be caused by a spinal issue, hence the repeated test. The test was negative, again, and the symptoms have improved. She’s doing pretty good right now, and I’ll take what I can get. She’s my sweet baby. =)

Update 05.16.09: So far, so good. Her little back still has a big square bald spot from the last myelogram, and her back legs are pretty wobbly, but she’s had no seizures, no apparent pain, and she’s eating, drinking and #1/#2′ing very well, so I’m very happy. It’s ridiculous how much I adore this pooch.

We also have a chihuahua named Taz. He’s going on 13 years old, and he’s my heart. Oh, how I love this dog. He’s a bit gray on the muzzle, and has fewer teeth than he did once upon a time, but he’s still my darling. Mister refers to him as “My Buddy”. Thankfully, he’s in good health and doing wonderful.

Lastly, we have a cat named Nikita. Yes, Mister named her after Peta Wilson. Go figure. I couldn’t complain too much, because I adored (OK, obsessed over) La Femme Nikita. She is (the cat, not Peta) a gray tabby who was of normal weight until around 2 years ago, whereupon she ballooned to a size so large she can no longer refer to herself as zaftig. Fat, y’all. The cat is freakin’ huge. Well, not huge as in obscenely fat, but I like to make fat cat jokes, e.g. referring to her as “The Tank”, or singing “I like big butts and I can not lie!” when I pass her on the stairs. She hates me. No, really. The cat actually flips me off when nobody else is around. Honest.