Update on Michelle Rose’s Valley Fever:
This is Michelle Rose. She is a proven female with 4 offspring on the ground. She is a wonderful mother who always has plenty of milk for her crias. In March 2009 I took Michelle to the vet with symptoms of weight loss, fiber stress breaks, and coughing. Blood tests came back showing that Michelle had valley fever which is a fungus that comes out of the dirt in Southwestern states.
Michelle took very ill combating a secondary bacteria that was giving her a respiratory infection. We had her on ketoconazole for the valley fever as well as an antibotic for the respiratory infection. Michelle continued to lose weight and got weaker and more depressed. The vet didn’t have high hopes for her as Michelle’s lymph nodes were the size of golf balls. The vet told me she had only seen this size lymph nodes on dead alpacas.
We switched Michelle’s medication to fluconazole but that med proved to be worthless for her. Michelle dropped 15 lbs in one week alone and her lowest weight was a very scary 133 lbs. Michelle’s normal weight was anywhere from 165 – 175 lbs. We had to remove Michelle’s 4 month old cria and wean him early as Michelle continued to nurse and lose even more weight.
At one point in time Michelle was literally only skin and bones. She could barely walk since she had no meat between her legs separating them. She would try to walk and could only stumble over her own legs. Her eating was maybe a mouthful or two of food per day. I called the vet and she told me to bring her in to euthanize her as Michelle was starving to death. Heartbroken I called the insurance company who advised that the vet needed to see Michelle one more time before euthanizing as the vet hadn’t seen Michelle in three weeks. I called Tom and told him I didn’t think she would make it until the end of the day. At this time she was laying completely on her side and breathing irradically.
I went into the house and got a shot of banamine. I wanted to try to make Michelle as comfortable as possible. I also wanted to move her back into her stall so her cria wouldn’t see her die. To my surprise after the shot Michelle got on her feet and walked back into her stall where she started to eat. This was not just a mouthful or two of food but she ate like she knew this was her last chance to survive.
I took Michelle to the vet the next morning and in transit she ate some food. When the vet saw her she said she could not consciously advise to put her down as Michelle was alert, standing, and eating. We switched Michelle back to ketoconazole and continued with the antiotics. Michelle started to improve slowly. Around December we took Michelle off the antibotics as she no longer had a respiratory infection and the med wasn’t making a difference in her lymph node size.
Here is Michelle 16 months later. She weighs 170 lbs and if you notice she actually has meat between her legs so she no longer stumbles around. As a matter of fact she runs and jumps with all the other females. Her coat is beautiful again with no stress breaks and just looks healthy.
In April of this year after taking Michelle’s blood we learned her valley fever titer was 1:32 which is a huge improvement over her initial 1:256; however, Michelle’s white blood count continued to be over double the normal count. The vet switched her to itraconazole.
Now we are on this med for the past 4 months. Michelle’s lymph nodes have made a drastic change in size. On the left side of her neck it is probably the size of a marble and the right side is slightly larger but definitely reduced in size. In a couple of weeks I will take Michelle back to the vet to get retested to see where we stand.
We’ve stuck by Michelle all this time. If she wanted to live then we were going to help her. Our goal is to see Michelle get pregnant and have another cria but this won’t happen unless she can prove to be healthy enough to do so. We can wait and so far she is proving she wants to live!
You can read more on Michelle’s past valley fever ordeal by clicking on the health category and the alpaca article menu from the right side of this blog.
