Welcome to Cuddles'  Addison's Diary

Cuddles  was diagnosed with Addison's on March 2, 2005. Hypoadrenocorticism  typically affects young or middle-aged female dogs. In most cases, parts of the cortisone-producing adrenal glands waste away to such an extent they are only minimally functional. As a result, the adrenals don't produce enough of two types of cortisone crucial to your dog's ability to use energy-containing glucose and balance levels of critical minerals such as sodium and potassium.

Vets aren't certain what causes the atrophy, but it is suspected the animal's immune system attacks its own adrenal glands. Occasionally, hypoadrenocorticism is due to a failure of brain-controlled mechanisms that stimulate the adrenal glands to secrete particular hormones. Addison's disease is an uncommon canine disorder and a challenging one to diagnose. Cuddles' vet thinks that Addison's is in reality a largely misdiagnosed problem in dogs. She is thinking that IBS at times can be in fact an indication of Addison's. I myself am wondering how much it is in this breed and just not tested for it?

She had been wasting away and had breathing difficulties plus shivering as if her body couldn't stay warm. With Addison's the dogs have trouble regulating their body temp.. Upon the first visit to the vet her hear had a temp of 99 (101 is normal), a definite murmur, her potassium levels were at 130 and sodium was 16. She was severely anemic and in great distress. Her heart was so weak that the vet had a hard time feeling her femoral pulse and hearing the actual beats.  Her chest films showed a smaller than normal heart size which was another Addisons red flag.

She spent the day at the vet's on fluids and started steroid treatment through injection and we just hoped for the best. We picked her up at 5:30 with her oral prednizone and a really serious doubt she'd be alive come morning. Oh my poor girl was so weak and had lost 7 pounds in the 2 weeks she'd been ill. She looked like a skeleton I'd never seen her face so pared down to skin over bones.

Here you can see the prominent occiput and her jaw bones as well as her sunken eyes. Every time she chewed her eyes receeded into her head. It was really disturbing. She had been 5 days into treatment in this picture taken March 6, 2005 and had started eating again so in this photo is not as bad as she was on Wed.

Tuesday's vet trip was a few hours long again and was actually worse as far as her anemia. She had a red cell count of 18 and was on her way to an emergency transfusion. The anemia caused her heart to skip beats and there was talk of EKGs and the emergency Vet. She was into her treatment of Florinef and Prednizone and her sodium/potassium levels were back in the normal range but that blood count was scary. I decided to attack this problem and crammed liver and spinach into her over the course of the night as well as what turns out to be Red Cell supplement the vet had on hand. Different names for different animals ;)

Her red cell count on Thursday was up to 21! It hadn't sunk and was on the upswing, there was definitely hope. She was acting perkier and stronger. On Friday her count was at a whole 28 and normal is 38. She's making steady improvement. On Friday she actually cantered across the yard to chase the cat. She also started vocalizing again. I hadn't really thought about it, but it has been at least 2 weeks since she stopped "talking". When she started commenting on life again I realized how much we'd not heard it and truly missed it.

With her rebounding like this and steady improvement, her outlook isn't as grim as it was on Monday but she is far from out of the woods. Cuddles will never be "cured" as there IS no cure but se is one of the lucky ones, she was diagnosed. All too often dogs slip through the cracks and actually have Addison's and are thought to have some other condition. With the daily meds hopefully she'll be here with us for quite a while yet.

Some signs to look for (and they  might be subtle) are:

Less frequent signs include:
 

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