We must have been posting at the same time...... Sable - he does wheeze during his coughing attack. Luckily my FIL is a doc & he has come by daily to check his lungs. That is great about your son taking care of his own meds.....shoot, I'm just trying to get this boy to remember to brush his teeth daily when he wakes up!! Golddust - he has a major sinus infection now. They did a CT scan & showed the cavities or rather not showing the maxillary cavity b/c it is so congested. Segbrown - I am glad Flonase is working for you. My DH uses that also. We are using inhalers that have the fine powder that comes out - he was having a difficult time knowing when to inhale & push the inhaler. I find myself wanting to twist & cock the inhaler for him but he has to be able to do it himself & he does. Total fluke about getting tested for allergies.....I had an appointment b/c of a rash on my arm. Asthma doc & FIL worked together many years ago so FIL tells me to take my DS with me to my appointment just to make sure he was not missing anything. So, I call to ask if I can bring my son & Dr. says yes. Well, after they did that testing on his back - my rash was never mentioned!! I am so grateful that we took him and had him tested b/c this explains so much. I am totally rambling but I really appreciate the support. Smiles:)

One of our cats is very attached to my DH. When we'd returned from a family visit out-of-state, we noticed that she had missing patches of fur (about an inch long) on the undersides of both front legs. When a biopsy showed nothing, and cortisone injections really didn't help, and it got worse (tops of front paws, back legs, more missing fur from front legs), we pretty much felt that it was likely OCD behavior/separation anxiety. We took her to a dermatology vet who agreed that our theory was pretty likely and started her on Elavil (amitriptyline). It's an antidepressant (for the OCD/sep anxiety) that also tends to have anti-itch properties, is generally well-tolerated by cats, with no side-effects (that we can tell), and the derm vet feels that there are no contraindications for long-term/lifetime usage. It helped eliminate the "overgrooming," and our cat will likely need to remain on it for life (attempts to reduce her dosing schedule down to every 3rd day weren't successful, so we bumped her back up to daily dosing, and will go back to every other day in a week or so and see if she's ok on that). We use a transdermal gel, and rub it inside her ear. Two hints if that's what they try on your cat next: we had the compounding pharmacy (Belvidere Pharmacy in NJ) compound it in a more concentrated formula so we can use less cream for the same medicine dosage (it's thicker and it takes less time to rub it in than the more watery and larger am't of the "regular" concentration). Also, I try not to go too many days before wiping out her ears with a wet piece of paper towel or gauze (the cream builds/cakes up over time). She actually likes when I do that--maybe she thinks I'm grooming her! Good luck!

Hi SG- thanks for the reference to Dr. Kummel. I will browse the vet library for her book. About the food trial and not being on meds- The problem with trying to assess a response to the food trial while the patient is on meds is that you'd expect the patient to get better because of the meds, regardless of the effect on food. And then you don't know if they got better because of meds or because of diet change. Truth be told, if food allergies are suspected, it makes sense to change the diet ASAP, and that's usually what happens. But you just can't assess the effects of the diet until the secondary problems (ear infection, hotspot, etc.) and meds (especially steroids) are cleared. When I was trying to get Aleksander's allergies under control, I switched his food while he was being treated for a hotspot and ear infection. He was on steroids at the time (he had food, environmental, and flea allergies- I have no idea which one set him off this particular time, but it was before he was allergy tested). His original diet was chicken and rice, and I knew beef didn't agree with him, so I switched him to lamb and rice. Because of the steroids, he wasn't itchy, and the antibiotics helped clear his ear infection and hot spot. But as soon as the meds were done, he blew up in a major way- worse he had ever been! Turns out, he was VERY allergic to lamb, and had been on it for a month while under treatment. But this time I switched him back to his original chicken and rice diet while he was under treatment for another hotspot/ear infection combo, and waited to start a novel diet after his treatments were done, and in the winter when his environmental allergies were not a factor. Turns out, he wasn't allergic to chicken or rice at all, and the first flare up was most likely due to environmental and/or flea allergies. I've seen similar things happen to other people too. Now when I suspect a food allergy with environmental allergies, I tell people to not bother doing an official food trial until whatever season the environmental allergies are at their lowest. But it doesn't hurt to switch foods before that, with the understanding that major flare ups in environmental allergies may require medical intervention and make us unable to judge the effect of the food.

Hi annz, the injection was dexamethasone for the allergy and she started the prednisolone pills 24 hours later. The vet suggested we just try to settle it down and see if it is a one off event, if it happens again, he suggested a skin scrape and perhaps some allergy tests. Apart from the redness the skin isn't showing much, he said there were no signs of infection, there are no welts or bites that can be seen either. The strange thing is that she had a c5 vaccination about a month ago, then two weeks later I found a lump on her neck where she had it, and about that time she started scratching. she doesn't have any history of allergies and has never been an itchy or scratchy dog at all so this was really strange. When I rang the vets office they said it sounded like a mild reaction to the vaccine and to give it a week or two for the lump to go down. Over the next week the lump stayed the same, but the following week it started getting smaller and just as it went away she had this skin reaction. I just can't shake this feeling that it's connected to that. I've read that these lumps after vaccination can be the body encapsulating the vaccine because it thinks it's a foreign invader, but perhaps as the body absorbed that lump it might have set off a second reaction??? The vet thinks it's unlikely they are connected, but this skin reaction just came out of nowhere and because of the timing I can't help but wonder if it's all from the vaccine shot? In a way I hope it is and that she isn't going to have to go through this again once it settles. Thanks so much for posting that link! It fits the atopic dermatitis description exactly, and I've been googling for the last couple of days and couldn't find anything useful about this. I've just rang the vet as you suggested and he said to keep going with the pills as she has to taper off them anyway, and then see where things are at.