Boy can I ever tell you about Addison's. Their adrenal glands don't work, so they don't make the stress hormones cortisol or adreneline. There's a really good support group called addisondogs online. Just google it and you'll have enough reading info for a lifetime. Liberty was diagnosed when she was almost 2, and she's 6 1/2 now. If you met her, you would never know she had it.
She gets 2 ml of percorten, a shot, every 32 days. The costs on this varies. The first vet I went to wanted to charge us $160 monthly for the shot. My favorite vet matched the price I found online, and charged $80 monthly for a long time. Just recently they've been unable to do that, so I now purchase the meds from petmeds.com and give her the shot myself. I pay $80 a shot.
She also takes 2.5 mg of prednisone daily. It's pretty cheap...less than $10 a month. It has no side effects because it's just making up for the cortisol her body would normally make but doesn't. As a matter of fact, if there are any side effects from the prednisone, they're getting too much. You want to give them the minimum amount possible without causing a return of symptoms. If you know they're going to be under stress such as an extra long play session, getting too hot, something physically, mentally, or emotionally taxing, when the body would normally make adreneline, you need to bump up the amount of prednisone just a little to compensate, or their organs start to shut down.
Avoiding stress can also be a challenge, until you figure out what really stresses them. I don't take Liberty to a groomer, I do it myself, partially because I enjoy it, and partially because I really don't want to stress her out and make her sick, though I'm sure if it became a routine, it wouldn't stress her at all. When we go on trips together, I don't go places where she can't accompany me, because it stresses her out, and it's not worth the risk. I also have a friend come to watch her at my house when I leave town because it would stress her out too much to board her. She has only been stressed out enough to get sick twice in those 4 years, and all that happened was her gut bacteria got out of whack and she needed some meds to get it back in control.
Another common result of Addisons is incontinence. The adrenal glands produce estrogen, which gives the dog control over their sphincters. In a spayed dog, normally they still produce enough estrogen to handle this, but in an Addison dog, their reserve is gone. Liberty takes Proin, and hasn't had an "accident" in years, thank heavens. That's about $10 a month too.
I don't know about other Addison dogs, but Liberty's digestive tract was seriously messed up in the time it took to get a diagnosis and get her meds just right. Ever since she has a bit of a sensitive stomach. She takes probiotics with every meal, and I can sure tell if we skip one because she's really gassy. That's about $13 a month.
The initial costs were around $2000 for diagnosis and treatment. Mainly that was lots of tests, special food because she wouldn't eat, iv fluids, and vet visits a few times a week for about a month. If the dog is already diagnosed, you can cross that off your list. Now she goes in for a blood test at least once a year. Fortunately for us, she's never had an abnormal electrolite reading, so we just continue with the routine. The visit and tests come to around $180 a year.
So, the yearly breakdown looks like this:
Monthly percorten shots: $960
Daily prednisone: $120
Daily Proin $120
Daily probiotics $156
Yearly Lytes Tests $180
Yearly Total: $1536
Sharing my life with the most amazing dog I've ever met: PRICELESS
I've had to make sacrifices to have her, but she's paid me back a million times over. I would do it again in a heartbeat. Liberty has an amazing temperament. I swear she can read my mind sometimes. She's affectionate, so smart, incredibly intuitive, obedient, funny, sweet, I could just go on and on. She's my heart dog.
What's her life like? Quite normal. She goes hiking with me on a frequent basis. She's a therapy dog and visits hospitals and care centers weekly. She also does many trainings with me, showing people how to do animal assisted therapy. The only thing different is that at meals, I drop her proin in her mouth, and put the prednisone and probiotics in her dish. I also give her a shot once a month. Otherwise, you would never know she had Addisons.
What scares me the most isn't the Addisons itself. We've got a really good handle on that. What scares me is if she gets sick with anything else. For example, if she got cancer, or broke a bone, or even had to have surgery for an intestinal blockage, it would seriously stress her body out, and would trigger the Addisons. I'm not sure you could give her enough prednisone to compensate for what the body would normally make in a situation such as that. I truly treasure each day I have with her and pray we have a long time left together.