Well, great news (we hope) after a few long weeks of bad news!
Coho seems to finally be recovering.
We had her on medication for 10 days as prescribed by our vet, and during this time Coho continued to have really (horribly) loose droppings (MUCH worse than the photo on page 1), was eating only just enough to maintain her weight (no loss, but no gain either... she was at only 1,300 grams / 1.3kg) and she was crying often and obviously not feeling well. She very obviously had a large buildup of gas inside-- each dropping was bubbling and (sorry if this is TMI) she actually had flatulence, after she would cry and cry, which I'm sure was wildly uncomfortable for her. As we hit two and a half weeks in the house I was trying to decide what on earth to do for her. The vet ran every test on her, including x-rays, already and I just was at a complete loss for why she wasn't recovering, or getting worse, or something. I had a terrible feeling that I was going to end up taking her back to the vet, only to have another high bill and no answers since the treatment didn't seem to be working. I consulted with our vet over the phone we decided to wait a bit longer, I wasn't giving up hope and I had a few more ideas. I was wondering if the medication really nuked Coho's digestive tract-- getting rid of the bad bacteria to help her get better, but perhaps all of the good ones too. I fed her a kefir grain and then yesterday, all of a sudden, Coho seemed much better. She is eating very vigorously, her droppings are NORMAL (I have never been to relieved to see poop) and she is fill of vigor and driving us nuts. That's a great thing! She is doing the same today and eating a ton. When I weighed her last night she was up to 1,580 grams! Wooo!
Now we just have to watch her a while longer to make sure she won't relapse. Based on my research on Clostridium [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]perfringens, it seems that it can cause symptoms even after successful treatment, so we will keep an eye on her. It also might explain why [/FONT]she seemed to get worse for so long, even after we started treatment.