Carbón beats heartworm: treatment and recovery journal

Emily_Babbelhund

Emily_Babbelhund

Mama Red HOT Pepper
Location
Regensburg, Germany
Emily said:
This is all sounding really positive!

As a very strange aside - I've actually taken the same antibiotic on various occasions and have never had any side effects. I'm interested in the dosage that Carbon's on?
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He's on 300 mg twice a day. Not sure how that compares to human dosage?

The nausea is definitely an issue for him, or at least it was during his first six weeks on it. The vet said it's a very common reaction in dogs.
 
Emily

Emily

Location
Melbourne, Australia
Emily_Babbelhund said:
He's on 300 mg twice a day. Not sure how that compares to human dosage?

The nausea is definitely an issue for him, or at least it was during his first six weeks on it. The vet said it's a very common reaction in dogs.
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That's a lot I believe. I've had 100mg twice a day, dropping back to 50mg once a day. And I'm just a little heavier than Carbon :$
 
M

M.F.

Great that he’s doing well! Well done YOU!!

Does the fish include bones? Or are you giving him a calcium supplement?

Raw dog food is only about 25% protein—from what I’ve read. A lot of the total weight is made up of moisture. I’m not sure the values in home-cooked, but guessing there’s less moisture in cooked vs raw. Did your vet make the deduction of too much protein based on a blood test?
 
Emily_Babbelhund

Emily_Babbelhund

Mama Red HOT Pepper
Location
Regensburg, Germany
M.F. said:
Does the fish include bones? Or are you giving him a calcium supplement?
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No bones in the white fish. He gets an egg with shell every other day, sardines a couple times a week and a small amount of cheese for training treats. I also got him egg shell powder but haven't actually used it yet. May be a good idea to dig it out and start. Along with protein, calcium is another thing I do worry about.

M.F. said:
Did your vet make the deduction of too much protein based on a blood test?
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It was based on a urine test. She thinks the protein/urine issue is due to his taking allopurinol for Leish. Back in Spain, I'd been given very conflicting advice: 2 vets said he needed to be on a very LOW protein diet, 1 vet (supposedly a Leish expert) said he needed to be on a very HIGH protein diet.

It's really hard to figure out which end is up...and that was before adding the heartworm into the mix!
 
snowbunny

snowbunny

Location
Andorra and Spain
You should definitely start on the calcium; calcium deficiency doesn't show up in routine blood tests, as if calcium is deficient in the diet it is leached from the bones. As you're probably aware, the ratio between calcium and phosphorous is the crucial thing, and most foods contain plentiful phosphorous. Even raw meaty bones aren't enough in most cases to give enough calcium in the diet because they also contain phosphorous. An egg with the shell also won't do a lot to help, as the shell must be ground or powdered to make it available during the digestion process. Not to mention the egg itself also contains phosphorous, of course! I add calcium citrate to my dogs' food, as it has a very high bioavailability. For a five kilogram batch of food, I add 25 teaspoons!

It sounds like there's a bit of confusion between protein and purine. Dogs on Allo need a low PURINE diet, but that doesn't mean low PROTEIN. So you can adjust the diet to use lower purine proteins :)
 
Emily_Babbelhund

Emily_Babbelhund

Mama Red HOT Pepper
Location
Regensburg, Germany
snowbunny said:
I add calcium citrate to my dogs' food, as it has a very high bioavailability. For a five kilogram batch of food, I add 25 teaspoons!
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What's a good source of this? It looks like he needs about 1400 mg a day, does that sound about right?

The egg shell powder I bought but haven't used yet is bio and finely ground. i'll dig out the container and see what it says. He gets a LOT of broccoli as well as daily green lipped muscle power, which it seems both are also good calcium sources, but maybe not enough.

snowbunny said:
It sounds like there's a bit of confusion between protein and purine. Dogs on Allo need a low PURINE diet, but that doesn't mean low PROTEIN. So you can adjust the diet to use lower purine proteins :)
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2 vets told me he needed low purine, 1 vet said the purine didn't matter. Argh! It was different combo of the three vets that told me about the high or low protein. They weren't mixing up the difference between purine and protein, it was just different opinions on what he needed. Only my German vet did a urinalysis, so that's where she came up with saying he needed low protein AND low purine.

OK, my head just exploded now...I am sadly NOT sciency!
 
snowbunny

snowbunny

Location
Andorra and Spain
Emily_Babbelhund said:
What's a good source of this?
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This is the one I use (you can get it on Amazon and plenty of other places) Now Foods, Calcium Citrate, Pure Powder, 8 oz (227 g)

Because it's about the ratio of calcium to phosphorous, you can't really say "how much", rather you mix it into the food based on the weight of the food. You want in the range of 1800-2200mg of elemental calcium per kg of food fed. The higher the percentage of meat in the diet, the higher towards the top of the spectrum you want.

3g of the calcium citrate (1.5 teaspoons) gives you 600mg of elemental calcium.
So if you were to go in the middle of the range, then for every kilo of food, you'd want 2000mg = 3⅓ servings = 10g or 5 teaspoons.

Emily_Babbelhund said:
Only my German vet did a urinalysis, so that's where she came up with saying he needed low protein AND low purine.
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If his kidneys are damaged, then he will need low protein. High purine intake while on Allopurinol can create Xanthine crystals in the kidneys, which cause this damage. So they are definitely linked. If the urinalysis indicated compromised kidney function, then you definitely should have him on a low protein diet.
 
Jacqui-S

Jacqui-S

Moderator
Location
Fife, Scotland
When I infrequently prescribed Doxycycline years ago a lot of people vomited with it and didn't tolerate it.
Now its a popular choice for sinuses, COPD and general chesty things, most people seem ok with just the odd vomiter.
Maybe the West coasters were less tolerant than the Easterners. Mind you, they all got indigestion on ibuprofen too. I always blamed it on the alcohol rich diet. Just so not to offend, I worked in Greenock/Post Glasgow/Gourock for a while. Nowhere posh like Ayrshire.

Human dose ranges from 200mg on the first day then 100mg daily for the rest of the week, to 100mg twice a day for a fortnight, depending on what you are treating.
 
Emily_Babbelhund

Emily_Babbelhund

Mama Red HOT Pepper
Location
Regensburg, Germany
Jacqui-S said:
Human dose ranges from 200mg on the first day then 100mg daily for the rest of the week, to 100mg twice a day for a fortnight, depending on what you are treating.
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Wow, so Carbon is on a massive dose then. I've consistently seen that given as the dose per kg for slow kill heart worm treatment, though. I still question if slow kill is the best thing for him. Just Carbon's luck that we get two illnesses (heartworm and Leish) where the treatments vary widely and are controversial between different veterinary sources. :(
 
Emily_Babbelhund

Emily_Babbelhund

Mama Red HOT Pepper
Location
Regensburg, Germany
It has been eons since I've updated this thread and that's a GOOD thing. After our initial discovery that raw meat and doxycycline do not mix, Carbon has been on a mainly fish-based diet and has had no nausea/vomiting problems from the doxy. I've continued to keep him on his special probiotic/vitamin combo (Florentero) and his immune system booster (Impromune). The Impromune was mainly a full-on effort to throw everything at his Leishmaniosis, but that's another story.

Why am I writing now? Because last night Carbon took his last Doxycycline and his heartworm treatment is officially OVER! :happyfeet:

He will continue on his topical (Advocate) for another two months and then we can switch over to a heart worm preventative in tablet form (I hate the topical stuff). I'll keep him on the Florentero for another month just to help his tummy recover from the 10 month onslaught of antibiotics. However there's certainly no outward sign that his digestive system is compromised. The miracle of a Labrador tummy!

We won't know for sure if this 'slow kill' method has truly worked until he is tested again six months from now. He is the picture of health, but then he has been for over a year now despite testing positive for Leishmaniosis, heartworm and associated inflammation and liver/kidney oddities.

So now we just cross our fingers (and furry toes) and hope for the best. I'm grateful that I don't have to douse him with antibiotics and that I can enjoy his zoomies 100% without having to worry if I'm letting him do too much.
Run like the wind, Carboncito, run like the wind! :sheeproll:
 
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