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Life’s An Itch (Part 5)

The trip to the veterinary dermatologist to get more help with our itchy problem was AWESOME! The Dr. Mundrell is friendly, warm, respectful, loving, diligent, etc! He was very understanding of Andy’s mistrust of men.

I’m glad we went, even tho it was a long wait, long drive, big bill (although not as big as I expected), and we have no definite answers yet. Having an expert’s opinions to go, and a treatment plan in place, on puts my mind at ease.

The tests done at the dermatologist’s office are inconclusive so far. We must wait for results on a few more things before having more definite answers. Based on the exam and hearing about how this problem showed up, Dr. Mundrell’s hunch is exactly the same as the results from the person who did muscle testing (kinesiology) on the cats: a skin fungus shared by all 3 cats. Dr. Mundrell thinks this is probably an elusive, but not rare fungus. (He has two likely suspects.) He said there’s also a chance this is due to a mite that’s difficult to find.

The treatment he recommends to me and my vet is to do as I (and the non-Western medicine health practitioners) wanted: continue lime-sulfur dips. (My vet was hesitant to do this until we had more info from a specialist.) He said we might have to do 6, 8 or even 12 dips. Once we see all symptoms gone, he wants us to do 3 more dips after that. Emma will have a slightly different protocol because of her seizure, but we will still need to treat her if this is due to a fungus or mite. Since we’ll have to do that many dips, I’m going to start doing them myself. It’s about 1/10th the cost of having the vet do ‘em.

Also, he says we can do steroids again if we need relief, but because of FIV, he’s not thrilled with the idea. (My vet feels the same, as do I. But Rumi is getting quite frantic again about the itching)

We’ll stay in contact with Dr. Mundrell during treatment. If more lime-sulfur dips don’t work, we might do allergy tests. But with all three cats presenting symptoms, he doesn’t want to put them through that ordeal (or me through the expense) until we rule out something infectious or communicable.

P.S. I only took Andy and Rumi to Edmonds to meet the dermatologist. Emma stayed home. Both boys traveled well this time. They didn’t meow, cry, or rattle the carrier doors at all. I’ll soon write an article about the carriers I bought that were easy to get them in and impossible for them to escape from. To help calm them for this trip, I draped a cover over the carriers so they felt like they were in a hiding place, I played relaxing music the entire time, and I talked softly to them from time-to-time.

Series: Lifes-an-itch

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