An update is that after a vet visit, some novox and antibiotics cleared up the pain and the infection, and she got better enough to drag yogi around the yard again:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZK33OSwDiDQ
[youtube]ZK33OSwDiDQ[/youtube]
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1135423#p1135423
After a week and a half or so of normality, about halfway thru the last week of rainy weather, Tiny started to show the same symptoms she'd had this most recent round of pneumonia, including becoming picky about eating again, gimpiness, fever, etc.
So back to teh vet we went today, and a careful exam showed no real definite signs of pneumonia this time. An xray at the right "settings" showed however that she has "donuts", or ringlets, around many branches of the bronchial tubes in her lungs, which are signs of inflammation / bronchitis of a type that is very similar in symptoms to pneumonia, and apparently the only reliable way to tell which it is is to use such an xray. Also, it's possible for this kind of bronchitis to cause it's own form of pneumonia....
The xray also showed that her esophagus isn't as bad off as it was before she started on the pyridostigmine, where it looked like almost a second stomach in size for it's lower 2/3's or more: now it looks enlarged but not hugely so, which may explain why it is easy enough for her to eat almost normally as long as she is at the ~45 degree angle on the feeding couch, instead of having to be at the vertical 90 degree angle a Bailey Chair would put her in (which I couldn't get her to stay in, as she'd jsut relax and slide down, compressing everything inside her so it wouldnt' have done what it was for, anyway).
The xray *also* showed the cause of her gimpiness and pain, and her hunched-over walking in the last several days: several of her vertebrae behind her shoulders have arthritic ridges on them, on the underside toward the lungs and esophagus. This is in the area where muscles and ligaments go for the front legs, and where they are supported by the long stems on the topside of those same vertebrae. Explains especially why she felt worst during the rains, and as it has cleared up she's gotten a bit better.
It also may explain some of her food-rejection, in that sometimes she just won't finish eating all of a meal, unless I go really slow with it, and wait for her "burp" that indicates a mass of food has passed into the stomach completely, before giving her more than a few spoonfuls at a time.
If I feed her like she prefers, and just keep the spponfuls coming, then at some point (when she feels hurty and gimpy) she often just rejects a spoonful, either by spitting it back out or just turning her head away. What I think happens in this case, knowing about those arthritic ridges, is that they are causing tissues to swell up around them, possibly including the esophagus, and pressuring it, so that once the food "builds up" waiting it's turn to slide down into the stomach (since her esophagus can't squeeze it down there anymore like normal), it reaches that irritated section and pushes on it from the inside while the irritated area pushes on the outside and it hurts, so she just stops eating and you can see she is not feeling well at that point.
If I wait a bit I can see her start to feel better, and that is as the food slides down into her stomach, and she may become hungry for the rest of the meal then (often she doesn't, once she hits that point she's done for a while, sometimes hours). That's probably as the pressure comes off the area, and the pain goes away.
As long as I don't ever let her reach that point, she will often (but not always) eat everything, if we go slow enough. Can take a half hour to an hour to get it all down that way, but at least she gets what she needs.
Alternatively, feeding her just a little, letting her walk around and do stuff, sleep, etc, then an hour to a few hours later feeding more, and so on, also works...but I can't do that during the daytime on workdays unless I take her to work with me, and even then only when I am myself at lunch for the halfhour we get...the possible issue with doing that is there's no feeding station, so she gets just a little front-end eleveation from pillows and towels stuffed under her inside the kennel on teh trike, and there is more risk of aspiration this way.
So we just feed her hwoever she'll take the most food, at any given time period. Mostly, it's not an issue and she'll eat enough (and want more), and sometimes she won't and we'll just make up for it the next meal if she will eat it, or in between meals, especially at night when I'm often unable to sleep thru a night anyway.
She also has the usual old-dog (she's about 9+) "skin lumps", most very small like rice grains, and soft, but during this most recent illness several of these flared up, three of them getting very hard (like jellybeans, and about that size, one of them even bigger). She ate one of them a couple days or so ago, on her right paw, and I've just been keeping it clean as I can. She eats any bandage put on it too, even if I coat it with awful-tasting/smelling stuff, or even hot pepper stuff.
Today, just before the vet visit, she ate the largest one that had been on her left side towards her back, between ribs and hips. :/ She hadn't gotten to the one on her left paw/wrist yet, so the vet did a sample (biopsy?) of that one and found nothing but normal cells and oil; a sebaceous cyst typical of big dogs.
Probably the others were that type too but we'll never know now. :lol:
The one on her left side I've shaved around it so I can keep it clean of all the fur and whatnot, and coated it first with antibiotic cream and then white pepper and cayenne, because naturally Yogi discovered it (while we were in the room at the vet waiting for test results) and wanted to "help" with it, so now he knows it's there and keeps picking at it, licking and sniffing it and leaving dirt and stuff all over it. Tiny has left it alone herself, so hopefully the pepper will keep Yogi away from it (so far, he doesn't like that stuff, unlike Tiny who is too stubborn to care).
So, Her Obstinacy continues on....