He's gotten digestive enzymes added with each meal once I found out he had pancratitis during crisis. Supposedly giving them helps the pancreas from being signaled quite so much or replaces what the pancreas can't provide if pancreatic insufficiency is going on with the animal/human.
Yes, that's correct. The pancreas releases enzymes during digestion. My instructor told us that we're born with a certain amount of enzymes that are to last us for life. When they run out, so do we. Again, I don't know how true that is, but her point was by adding enzymes to the diet, you reduce the stress on the pancreas, which isn't having to release those enzymes. I'm glad Vlad is getting them!
His vet said his thyroid was fine at 1.7 though that's below the middle of 1-4 reference value.
I may be way off on this, but to me that seems low-normal. If he was human, I'd be wondering if he was showing symptoms of hypo-thyroidism. I'm not sure how those symptoms manifest in dogs, though.
I just did a lot of reading on hypothyroidism, because my mother has that issue, and one of the books I read advised to treat based on the symptoms, not the labs. Just tossing that out there, because I'm wondering if, despite the lab showing "normal" and the vet saying it's "fine" if Vlad isn't slighty hypothyroid, which may be contributing to the high cholesterol.
No, he never had any hugely comprehensive blood tests before his Addisonian crisis--just basic things when they were trying to figure out what might be wrong with him.
Thanks for looking.
I asked since, if you did have them, it would give you a baseline to compare the new lab to.