Tag: new meds

Prednisone Sensitivity

09/27/2013 / Matt / 0 Comments

Monty is extremely sensitive to the side effects of Prednisone (see Cushing’s syndrome), but it is also the only drug proven to keep GME at bay. It’s a delicate balance of disease treatment and symptom management we’ve been through before and will get through again.

Today’s neurologist checkup went well with the CBC panel coming back normal, so he had another Cytosar treatment. We’ve started a new daily supplement called Denamarin to help support his liver functionality and health with all of the medications he receives daily, and have introduced Leflunomide in the hopes of supplementing and eventually replacing the Prednisone that gives him such a hard time. While Leflunomide has not yet gained widespread acceptance as a GME treatment, Dr Allen Sisson (one of the leading doctors in the research and treatment of GME) has seen remission rates of up to 90% at 1.5 years when including the drug in long term treatment protocols. Additionally we decided to see if we can drop the daily antibiotic without any new UTI or hot spot issues in an effort to reduce the daily med load.

Turnaround

08/22/2013 / Matt / 0 Comments

Changing to a new antibiotic last week has led to a HUGE improvement in Monty’s activity level, socialization, and awareness. He seems much more content and if smiles and licks are any indication he’s the happiest dog alive right now! Tomorrow is another checkup with the neurologist and we plan to discuss modifying treatment to lower the Prednisone dose due to his extreme sensitivity, but for now we’re happy he’s happy.

Really CVS?

08/20/2013 / Matt / 0 Comments

I shop at CVS all the time, some days I’m there several times in a single day. It helps that it’s 500 feet from my front door, but I’ve never really had a bad experience there in almost three years. Until now…

It was late last Friday afternoon right as the latest hot spot breakout was getting started. I had Monty’s Cefpodoxime prescription called into my normal CVS pharmacy in the hopes I could start the first dose the same evening to stop the hot spots in their tracks. At that time they could only dispense three pills which would get us through the weekend and they’d place an order and fill the remaining on Monday. Monday rolls around and I stop by in the morning to find out that order was never placed so they can only dispense another three pills. No problem, I’ll come back a third time for the same prescription. Keep in mind up to this point I haven’t paid a dime and all of the receipts say $0.00. So I’m sure you can imagine my shock when I picked up the remaining 24 pills and $182.99 shows up as total due. Still in shock I stumbled home to discover that 1-800-PetMeds had the same medication for $45. Ugh!

Unfortunately with the timing on this it appeared there would be no way to get the prescription he needs before he ran out of the supply on hand or when we leave for vacation. So as much as it pained me I had to suck it up and pay. I did however place an order on PetMeds, used a $5 coupon code, and with free shipping a 30 day supply was going to be on it’s way for $40.

So moral of the story? Always ask for the price of your prescription before you fill it. Ask about price matching policies. Shop around. While I’ll admit CVS has generally been cheapest on everything else, in this case I got screwed hard so I won’t be filling this one with them again.