The Platelet Saga Continues...

We've been back to the vet multiple times now for repeat blood draws and had another scare about a week ago. Abby's platelet count dropped to 12,000, so we had to increase her steroid dose (instead of hopefully decreasing it based on a good result from that day). She's back on the rebound now it seems.
Here are here "numbers" from Feb. 2/4: 245,000
2/12: 189,000
2/18: 12,000
2/21: 102,000

She goes back in on Friday (Chris is being very kind and taking her in for me) and hopefully she'll be above 200,000.

Dr. Havens did some talking with his fellow vets about Abby and it seems that this is not all that uncommon even though it is frustrating. Dogs can have relapses for 6-12 months following their first "episode" of IMTP. Dr. Havens seemed to have had good luck with his previous patients, in that he really hasn't seen any dog have this much trouble with mutliple low platelet counts after starting treatments. So, the hope is that there is nothing else going on that we don't know about, but based on a normal abdominal ultrasound and lymph node biopsy, we're feeling pretty comfortable. He talked about doing a bone marrow biopsy or CT scan, but we're not interested in going that far...like he said if you start doing those things, you're only looking for bad stuff. So we're just plugging along for now.

I got Abby her own pill box a few weeks ago...my dog takes more pills than I do! And the other good thing is that I've scrounged up some coupons for free gift cards with a new prescription, so when I have to go pick up more meds for Abby it really won't cost us anything!