Hi Kate and everyone else who has been so kind with your advice and overall interest in my girl Dagny....hope all your dogs are well!
Dagny is doing alright actually! The weather is warming up here so it makes trips to the park even better. ;-) We've had to switch to a raw diet due to some diarrhea issues from kibble and she's loving that. The only problem is that there are no commercially made frozen or freeze dried raw diets here (like Nature's Variety or Primal or Stella & Chewy's), so I do it myself.
As for her CM/SM, I'd say she's stable, but we had a bad period of nonstop rain for about three weeks, so as you can imagine, it wasn't great for her symptoms. When it's time for her next gabapentin dose, she has more symptoms, but they go away quickly. She'll have a few scratches and face rubs throughout the day, but not 20+ like it was in the beginning. And the ones she does have are 10 seconds or less and are NOT vocal. She hasn't had a vocalisation of her pain (not even a small one) in well over a month.
The tricky part now is knowing where that "sweet spot" is in terms of meds. I think when she was on 75 mg 3x/day of gabapentin, for about a two week period, she was nearly symptom-free, but she's growing (just over 6kg and 7.5 mos old now) and her dose was upped to 100 mg 3x/day as her weight increased. We just upped her Diamox (CSF inhibitor) to 30 mg instead of 25 since that dosage was never increased. Her neuro doesn't want to dose her to the max for her weight, so that way we have room to add in more if she needs it down the road, so I"m OK with that. I don't know if we're aiming for 0 symptoms or just no vocalisation.
I can't help but be paranoid sometimes when she seems to be scratching more over whether or not she's getting worse. I just have to keep focusing on the positive and live every day with her to fullest. I don't think she's worse.
The plan was to re-MRI her in August (6 month mark from the diagnosis) to see if there's been progression, but I was thinking about this and may opt against it. What will it change? Except have me be out a bit of money. If she's the same, great. If she's worse, what will that mean? That I'll rush off with her to the US for surgery? I don't know. I want the best for her, but not sure surgery would be the best route for us. I just don't know. If my surgeon in the US said it has a 70%+ chance of helping her live a full life, great, I'd probably do it, but those odds aren't the norm. I think if her symptoms worsen, we'll of course MRI her to see if the SM has progressed, but if she's the same in August? Not sure I'll MRI her. It's just all up in the air.
I love my dog with all my heart and I can't imagine our lives without her. So so so happy that we made it through the tough spots (thanks to all of your support here on the board). I was so scared we'd have to put her to sleep. She's like a whole new dog now (with the occasional symptom) and I just hope it stays stable for the rest of her life. We can hope, right?
Thanks again.