Decisions Are Tough

So I went to visit my kitty again. This was about 4:30pm. Shaun came with me. At first he did not want to see Casper but he decided to come in. We talked to the vet. Still no good news. We asked to see Casper again. We went to see him...I think he was worse than he was about 4 hours earlier when I last visited him. I held him. I talked to him. Shaun got to pet him while I was holding casper and he purred very softly. I thought this might be a good sign so I couldn't bring myself to put him down. We visited with him for about an hour. We finally left to eat about 5:30pm. We both haven't eaten all day. Just didn't seem important with what was going on with the presh (Casper). Shortly before 6pm, I got the phone call. They said he went downhill right after we left. Casper was no longer breathing on his own and we gave them orders to do whatever they could to save him, which put him on a respirator while they phoned us. They said the respirator was very hard on him and needed my permission to take him off. I cried over the phone and told them, 'yes, is it okay? is he okay?' They said yes it's a good decision. They handed me off to a second person for confirmation. That made me cry more. And they asked me the same thing. I said 'yes.' And they let him go.

Casper

I originally started doing this blog just to help myself work/journal though the stress of my cat being sick.  I recently shared a link on my facebook page for those that are interested and maybe those that can learn from it and help save their cat in time.

I Don't Know How to Say Good-Bye

I called the vet this morning at 7:30am. I could tell the doc did not want to tell me what she was about to say. Casper's blood tests are worse than expected. His liver is 3-4 times higher than should be, he has anemia, a mild infection in his body, and worst of all is his kidneys....the levels are off the charts. I mean literally off the charts they are so high they don't know the exact number. They know it is higher than the lab can test to, which is not good.  Basically that means his kidneys are failing and there is really nothing they can do to stop it except give him intravenous fluids, but he won't eat so it makes his body to weak to heal and if he won't eat his liver will fail. Since he is too weak for a surgery to put in a feeding tube (the anesthesia will certainly kill him), if the kidneys don't fail his liver will first. The only way he has a chance is if he starts eating again, which looks very unlikely. I went to go visit him today. I met with the doctor before hand. He told me Casper is pretty much non-responsive and will not eat and things don't look good. I asked him if I could visit with him and try and feed him. He said I could. I saw him from afar. He looked weak and lifeless. I tried to feed him. He wouldn't swallow or even acknowledge I was trying to feed him. I cried, I held him, I love him. I do not know how to let him go. I stayed for a while and just cried. I couldn't stop. I want him back, but I could tell this is it. I just don't want to accept it. The techs were really nice; one of them came over and gave me some tissues and talked to me for a bit. I eventually left without talking to the doctor again. I didn't want to ask him what I should do next. I don't ask questions I don't really want to know the answer. And I didn't want to know, but I knew. I went home. I need a little time to process being in my house without my precious. It's hard. I will go back in a couple hours and talk to the doctor and face what I already know.

Emergency Clinic

Casper is non-responsive and seems to be in a lot of pain today and won't eat. Our normal vet is not open so we are forced to take him to the emergency clinic. Our doctor at the emergency clinic seemed very worried about our poor baby. She couldn't believe our general vet just let us go home on Friday. She said it was 50/50 chance of him surviving. That was before he got the blood test results back. We admitted him to the emergency clinic so he can get intravenous fluids and more blood work. She seems to really care about our baby and wants to help him. She said I can call her as much as I want tonight, but that she would call me if anyone went wrong...or bad. So I don't want that call. So now I'm at home without my precious kitty. I feel empty just leaving him up there. Please pray that he gets well. I need him.

Hepatic Lipidosis

So my cat is sick. Really sick. I have been syringe feeding him for about 10 days now. Tuesday night was hard. He had diarhhea really bad! All over the place; our bed, our floors, my lap. Yah, not fun. I was up until 3:30am tending to my cat and just cleaning everything up (because this started late at night). Then all the sudden his beautiful blue eye turns yellow. The iris part (the whites are already yellow because of jaundice. This happened on Wednesday and my vet office is closed. Unfortunatley, I am working an 11 hour day on Thursday so I can't see the vet then. I gave him IV fluids at home Wednesday and Thursday. My beloved Casper continues to get weaker. I was able to get time to take him to the vet on Friday at 4:30pm. They seem to think he has an eye infection, which I do believe there is something wrong with his eye (I plan to go to the animal optomistrist next week). They give him an enema (becuase he is constipated or just to weak to pass it), IV fluids and have instructed me to give IV fluids twice a day now. She also wants Casper to start on Clindacure...the medicine that made him stop eating in the first place. I said I would prefer it to be in capsule or pill form...I can get him to take that. I told the vet that I thought he would stop eating if we put him on that. I said this three times. She still pushed for the liquid Clindacure. Sure enough his first syringe after his first doage of Clindacure he refuses to eat! He clamps his mouth down shut spits anything out that we can get in. It's horrible!! The previous day he had 15 syringes (equivalent to 1.5- 5oz cans of food). Today, Saturday, he is doing worse than ever. I don't know what to do!

Pancreatitis Almost NORMAL!!

Blood test comes back. Great news! Pancreatitis enzymes are almost normal!! Vet said he's practically fully recovered from pancreatitis. However, some bad news...his liver enzymes are off. They should be 15, but are over 50! What does this mean? Well we need to put him on prednisolone and start giving him any food he wants because eating is important. Okay, great I'm excited. We will put him on a new drug and it will cure him! Two days go by and he isn't better and still not eating much, I call the doc. She said to come in and get a syringe and special food so I can syringe feed him. I love my vet....but WHY didn't she suggest this sooner! I can't blame this on her I guess she has so much going on. I know she loves cats so I know it wasn't an intentional mistake. I go home and start doing research and I think our cat developed Hepatic Lipidosis...I have been reading all about it the last several days. I am in shock. Why didn't the doc say if the cat reduces it's diet for about 1-2 week that is is serious?? I just thought if a cat doesn't eat for one or two days its serious! My cat was eating about1 3 oz can (normal is 3 3oz cans) when he was on the Clindacure. I think this is what developed Hepatic Lipidosis in my kitty. I'm heartbroken. I could have done something to prevent it! When I saw he was reducing his diet while he was on Clindacure, I could have syring fed him the rest of his daily requirements so we could have prevented this! Why didn't anyone stress to me what a terrible disease this is and how easily it could happen?? He is now 8lbs 13 oz (remember a month prior he was 10lbs 15oz from a previous inital/normal weight of 15lbs!)

Results

Okay, so the ultrasound checked out...no tumors. Although he did say that the liver was a little dark. Ht did not tell me what that meant or if that was anything I should worry about. So I asked, after he offered no further explaination....'What does that mean?' He said that means there could be some inflamation. We are still waiting on the aspirate to come back and that could tell us if something else is wrong. The liver aspirate test comes back...pretty much inconclusive so he said that we should proceed with a biospy of the liver, intestines, and pancrease. I thought that just seemed overkill. Now that I know that his pancreatis has healed, we know that it was unnecessary at least for the pancrease biopsy! Okay so we do nothing...that is his recomendation. I was baffled by this. At this time, my cat has sever pancreatitis and we are doing nothing??!! It is suppose to just heal on its own? I don't understand. So we do nothing for two weeks and then a phone call from a fellow doctor at the internal medicine facility. I missed the call and called back. They said someone would call me back. That was Tuesday and no one did. The following Tuesday a week later, I was starting to get stressed we are doing nothing for my cat and he's sick! I call my general vet and tell her my cat is just not doing good. He needs help. She tells me she just got off the phone earlier that morning with the internal medicine specialist (so he calls her & not me?) and he told her that Casper has or may have toxoplasmosis. I still don't understand what tests either hinted at or 'sort of' (?!) confirmed this. But I was happy we could start treating him and making him feel better. So we put him on antibiotics...for two weeks. The Clindacure made casper less hungry. I didn't think anything of it...I was just glad he was on antibiotics and I thought it was okay that he was eating less for now while he was getting better...well two weeks later I bring him back to the vet and I tell them my cat feels better and moving around more but he's just not eating anymore.
So we do the big blood panel test again....waiting for results.

Need to Go to a Specialist

As in the previous post, I mentioned that I scheduled an appointment with an internal medicine specialist for my kitty. I was so looking forward to it and getting him well and doing the ultrasound that our vet recommended. I know it was going to be about $400-$500 and I was okay with that. Met our doctor. He wasn't even wearing a white coat. He was wearing tight blue jeans and a western shirt. He looked like he was about to go to a country music hall. Anyways, I decided to put my judgements aside and hope that he was a serious doctor that knew what he was doing. I proceeded to tell him things about my cat and you could tell and I told him what I thought was wrong and didn't even seem to want to listen because, of course, he knew more than me. Even though I am the one that lives with him daily. The meeting went on. He didn't hint at anything too serious, but that we wanted just to get things checked out. Then a tech came back with us an estimate and it was $2800! Really? He didn't even hint doing any of the stuff that was on this list. I think he just heard my husband and I say 'We will do anything for our Casper to make him better' and this doctor thought...payday!! Let's hit them hard 'I know they'll do anything if I say it is necessary'. I thought we were going in for just an ultrasound! So I settled on about $950 of what was recommended, which was the ultrasound and liver aspirate. Then he made me feel like a jacka#@ (pardon my language) for not doing the rest of what was recommend, which to me, seemed entirely unneccesary! If it was neccesary, he should have explained why...which he didn't explain why we were doing anything. I didn't even know the 'aspirate' was a 'liver aspirate'....my general vet is the one that told me why he was doing that test. He said we would have to drop off our kitty and pick him up later while he did the ultrasound. I'm still not sure why he couldn't have done that while we were there. But I have never been to an internal medicine specialist so I did as directed.

Skinny Kitty

I am really worried about my cat. He has been sick since Dec. 8th. Well actually, before that...that is the date I brought him to the vet to begin this ordeal. I noticed he looked skinny and when I brought him to the vet he was 10lbs 8oz from his original 15lbs! They ran the whole blood work on him and found out that his pancreatis enzymes were sky high. So he had pancreatitis and a very mild case of kidney failure but nothing to worry about on that front as it is normal as his age (per vet...I wouldn't know). So my vet suggested I see an internal medicine specialist to do a ultrasound for the kitty to check for tumors and the like. I promptly scheduled the service as soon as I could.