So how IS Frank?

Well, there's not a whole lot going on with Frank. He is improving
steadily since Tuesday. On Tuesday morning, I actually thought that I
might have to put him down. He was miserable, skin inflamed, seemed
feverish and was refusing water. His ataxia had not improved and
seemed a bit worse. I called my vet and luckily they said "go ahead
and bring him in" and I dropped him off to stay for the day.

Seems the vet on Saturday misdiagnosed his demodex and it is really sarcoptic mange. Which is contagious but easier to treat and not re-occuring. The only thing she did get right was the severe pyoderma but 

because we were only treating that and not the mange...he was not
improving. The dose of ivermectin for demodex is much less than the
dose for sarcoptic.

We took him off the pain meds, put him on prednisone to work in the
inflamation and allergic reaction to the mites. Changed his ivermectin
dosing. Since that alone did not account for his ataxia, we decided to
re-do his HW test to include lyme and erlichia, did a fungal culture
and bloodwork.

Not a whole lot interesting in his bloodwork except for a couple of
values. His thyroid is below normal at .8. He could be hypo thyroid
secondary to his current illness or this could be a growing problem
for him and in rare cases hypothyroid can cause some ataxia and muscle
weakness along with lethargy and weight gain. It would be hard to
tell at this point which is the first one because he is definately
very tired but he is on the thin side of healthy weight.

He is also mildly anemic, again could be secondary to what is going on.

WBC normal range so for the moment we are ruling out an infectious
agent at this point.

tick titers were normal

So for now we are going to work on his skin and closely monitor his
neurological issues this week and come next week if there is not
improvement as his overal health improves we will re-address and
perhaps do a thyroid panel. If his anemia and thyroid values are
secondary to whatever is going on....they should begin to resolve.

None of this really addresses the cause of his unsteadiness and we
still don't know the answer. If we had more history, we could
potentially know if he was born this way, got this way due to trauma,
trauma of a single event like HBC or multiple events (abuse), etc.

He said if we choose to go the thryoid panel and get no results, then
there is the spinal tap and/or mri and possibly a specialist. I am
not ready to consider those options at this point.