Vet agreed to the drugs

Jessey

Jessey

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Dec 20, 2004
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Got an email last night to say the vet has agreed to a prascend trial for Jess, it should be here tomorrow.

I think I'm going the right route, they have been shut in the 2 small corral's and the little bit in between since last week, probably a total area of 20m2. Yesterday at 4pm jess had no pulses and walked out slightly lame when I put them on the track but it wasn't every step. By 8pm she was sound (trotted her up on the road) but had slightly raised pulses.

The vet agrees there is probably more than one thing going on, but warned me the drug trial might be a waste of time/money, which I accept it may be but at least it rules that out for me if it is and its less risk and cheaper then doing the other tests anyway.

Jess was just plonked on 1 tab a day last time and had no side effects, but I'm thinking to be on the cautious side I might start with half then up her after a few days or perhaps do half morning and evening, I'm really crossing everything we get an improvement, it would answer so many questions.
 
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I think it's a good idea to try it, the acth test isn't totally reliable & the other test is risky if they are already borderline laminitic. ow many tablets is he sending you? My practice tends to start them on half a day for a month to begin with, but if you have a limited number of tablets & want to see if they make a difference then if she's tolerated it before I'd go for one a day. I'm told there's no benefit in splitting the dose.

Good luck x
 
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We are going for 1 a day as that's what she had before. I know there is no benefit to splitting the dose long term but the lami site suggested if there was some urgency to get them on to it then splitting the dose initially could help reduce the veil. I wouldn't be too concerned about it but as I am going to be deciding on effectiveness based on physical symptoms alone I really need that not to be a factor.
 
Jack had a huge veil within 36 hours of two full tablets so I then halved them to morning and evening and he settled back down really quickly. After a week I upped him back to one daily in the late afternoon and he had been fine since. He recently upped to 1.5 tabs with no change in his personality. Still not has not ever had any sign of lami....even farrier said his are looking "brilliant".
 
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Fingers crossed it works or helps rule out things if it doesn't.

I do feel there is a pressure sometimes to have horses on meds. Everytime I post something about Kia and mention his age on some sites he automatically should be on prascend but my vet is happy with the levels tested and doesn't prescribe it. Will be watching to see how you get on with it :)
 
Believe me I'd rather not have her on drugs, thats the reason I took her off it 2 years ago but if it helps stabilise her now so we can get her comfortable I'm okay with that, for now.
 
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I think it's just like humans - medication for the sake of medication is to be avoided but I know that when symptoms start to disrupt my life, I'm happy to take whatever is prescribed/available! Fingers crossed Jess comes sound or at least improves. If nothing else, it might give you another clue as to what is going on.
 
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I'm keeping my fingers crossed for you, after all the stress and heartache you and Jess have been through you deserve a breakthrough. x
 
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I am a little confused, and probably a bit dim! Can you explain exactly what prascend is and how it may help Jess? I am thinking it's for cushings but not sure? Or is it a hormonal drug?
 
Yes its for cushings, which is they believe is caused by a tumour or malformed pituitary gland lobe, which causes some hormones to go out of whack, ACTH and cortisol, which then cause the symptoms we are used to hearing about.

Jess was diagnosed with cushings 3 years ago after a marginally high ACTH test and positive reaction to Prascend, in that her ACTH levels dropped when on it. We recently had another ACTH test which came back as normal but she still shows some symptoms so we are going to put her back on the drug to see if these reduce/dissapear as its possible the test was a false negative. There are more accurate tests but they carry risks of pushing them into full blown lami, which I don't want to risk.

My hope for helping her is, well vets diagnosed heel pain last year and she's been having good and bad times but we believe there is more than just that going on. Simply put the question we are trying to answer is, is she overloading her heels at times because her toes hurt from LGL? As her diet is very controlled already, limited grass, low starch & sugar feed and hay and her weight is reasonable we have to question a metabolic cause for that, its a long shot but worth a try.
 
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Good luck Jessey. I know you would rather avoid using the drugs but I think you're right to give it a go. It's got to be worth a try hasn't it? I really hope it works for her. How long before you'd expect to see results?
 
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I don't really know, not sure if the improvement before was coincidental, but it was a couple of weeks after starting them then.
 
Bloody vet forgot to drop them off, luckily my other neighbor works in their lab so she is going to bring them home tonight :)
 
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