Pancreatitis

[Willow71]

Just wondering regarding pancreatitis - Willow has had suspected low grade pancreatitis at least twice possibly three times in the last two months. She seems to pick up after getting rehydrated and having pain relief, anti nausea and appetite stimulant at the vet. Each stay has been over several nights. A couple of times she has had antibiotics as well but not this particular time. The last two times she may have had a uti as well so they gave antibiotics. My question is - is there anything else we can do to stop this constant reaccurrence? The blood test came up negative last time for pancreatitis but the fact that she had inflammation when ultrasounded led them to suspect pancreatitis on top of the nausea, vomiting and lack of appetite. Though this time we caught it earlier with just a few vomits but still eating her food but she had ketones present in her blood at 1.3 and then 1.5. The vet does advise a sensitive low allergy diet which we are going to start. I’m just concerned because willow starts going down hill again once she is home. Sometimes she feels better for a week or so. She definitely has issues with dehydrating quickly. We tried subcut fluids at home with a syringe and fluids given by the vet but she didn’t tolerate it well. We do syringe water into her mouth at times and put it in her food every meal. She has also just been changed from lantus to caninsulin this week to see if it works any better. We just haven’t been able to get her levels stable on lantus and she bounces from high to low too quickly.
Sorry for the long post. I’m just concerned she will go downhill again if we don’t get things right.

 

[Kris & Teasel]

@Djamila has a lot of experience with pancreatitis attacks. She might be able to give some advice.

 

[tiffmaxee]

With chronic pancreatitis it comes and goes. Max had it from the age 12 until I lost him to heart disease at 19. He was only hospitalized for it once. I treated him at home with nausea medication, occasionally buprenex for pain, sub-q fluids at times, and his regular diet. He was given small meals more often. He had episodes many times after a routine vet appointment. Stress caused it for him. I realized when his appetite started to rank it was about to occur and started ondansetron mostly and sometimes cerenia. His episodes became shorter once I realized he wasn’t getting enough ondansetron for his weight. Have you read any of the articles in the primer Marje put together? A good one is the IDEXX Roundtable. It might help you.