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Jade’s EPI story

Jade was born March 18, 2013 and came to live with us, her forever home, May 25, 2013. She is an extremely happy, energetic and loving puppy. It was approximately a year after we got her, at approximately 14 months old, Jade started presenting with symptoms. She went from having 3-4 bowel movements pre day to needing to go out every 1-2 hours. Whatever she ate went right through her. She was having massive amounts of diarrhea, however never lost her appetite.  She continued to be playful and happy. After 2 weeks of diarrhea, we took her to the Vet. Her initial diagnose with a GI infection from dirty pond water. She was started on antibiotics and probiotics. Over the course of the next 2-4 weeks, the diarrhea worsened, we started seeing a significant change in her attitude and personality and the most horrifying change with her weight loss. Over the course of 4-6 weeks Jade had lost nearly 20lbs. After several visits to the vet, multiple trials of antibiotics and probiotics, enough was enough. We knew there was something significantly wrong. July 3rd,2014 Jade had her fasting bloodwork done and the next day, we got our diagnoses. Exocrine Pancreatic Insufficiency.

We were happy to finally know what was wrong, however, needless to say we were extremely overwhelmed at this point. What was EPI? How do we treat it? What is the best treatment option? So many questions. With the mounting stress of watching our fur baby waste away to nothing, we were faced with a tough discussion…what to do next? We could not afford the veterinary enzymes, which would cost us nearly $250.00/month. We thought we would have to give Jade away. We were devastated. Then we found epi4dogs.com and EnzymesDiane.com. Through the endless support and advice from the members of epi4dogs.com we found answers to our numerous questions and then some. We can honestly say that without the members support we don’t know what we would have done.

Jade was started on her enzymes treatments right away, along with a 6 week course of weekly vitamin B12 injections. We started to see some improvement, however the diarrhea continued. Again, through advice from epi4dogs members, we got Jade started on a treatment course of Tylan for her SIBO. Within a few days of treatment Jade was have formed bowel movements and again weight. With treatment Jade is doing amazing. She is back to her happy, joyful self and is happy to be a EPI survivor and lifelong epi4dogs member.

Sara, David & Jade