Good news, bad news.
Sep. 24th, 2010 03:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luna_manarI have spent three days in Atlanta, caring for Duma. Although she is in very fragile condition, there is some good news.
I spoke with Duma's vet, and she gave me a much better idea of what has been happening. Bloodwork showed everything off the charts, from liver to white blood cell count, and an ultrasound showed an ominous mass in her liver. No further tests could be done, due to her current state: she weighed less than four pounds. That's about 1/3 as much as she should weigh. She was so emaciated, you could see her bones through her fur. Honestly, when I first saw her, I thought, there's no way. I thought I was going to have to put her down that day, before she actually starved to death.
But I also noticed that her eyes were gooked up, and from my experience with critters and cancer, that's an unusual symptom. Messy eyes usually mean infection. When I spoke with the vet, she told me that Duma's intestines had been inflamed, which she had chalked up to diarrhea due to a bad reaction to the thyroid medicine she had been on (since has been changed). I told her about Duma's eyes and asked her if the bloodwork and mass and inflammation could be explained by infection. If the mass is a cyst, and not a tumor; so the vet took a second look at the bloodwork and said that yes, in fact it seemed MORE likely that the abnormal levels were a result of infection, now that she was looking for it, and the gummy eyes confirmed that if there wasn't an infection before, there was one now.
So I brought her to the vet and they gave her a good dose of antibiotics and showed me how to give her a water hump (less kinky than it sounds), basically you pick up a flap of skin and fill it with water--the body absorbs it, so an animal who is having trouble drinking, like Duma was, they can hydrate themselves without having to consume water. It's better than an IV drip because it allows freedom of movement.
A day later, Duma is eating voraciously, meowing, purring when I pet her, looking me in the eyes, and climbing the stairs. Before, it was like she was in autopilot; she couldn't look up, she couldn't jump, she could barely stand up, and it was like she didn't realize I was there. She ate, drank, and used the litterbox, and she slept, pathetically, on a blanket on the floor. She had gotten a little better with me staying up all night with her, feeding and cleaning her (she smelled so bad, ugh), but the antibiotics were like an overnight miracle. By this morning, she was her old self again, as much as she could be with her eyes still messy and her poor emaciated body.
But she us eating, and she gained two ounces of weight in ONE DAY. So her body is now processing her food and putting on the pounds....and it's possible that a combination of infection and bad reaction to the old thyroid meds were the cause of both the horrible blood levels, weight loss and the liver mass. It us also possible that the mass is cancerous, but is not the cause of the weight loss. In any case, if we can actually get Duma back to a healthy weight, we can look further into investigating that mass. It's all a question of waiting, now. But I'm really glad I spoke to the vet, because I honestly don't think they would have looked at the bloodwork in context of infection if I hadn't brought it up.
Duma has always been basically healthy. She is a tough cat and has taken a lot of hardship and random weird illness in stride. On the offchance it is NOT cancer, she might live several years, yet. But we have yet to determine this; it is just as likely that all we've done is buy her a few more weeks.
I spoke with Duma's vet, and she gave me a much better idea of what has been happening. Bloodwork showed everything off the charts, from liver to white blood cell count, and an ultrasound showed an ominous mass in her liver. No further tests could be done, due to her current state: she weighed less than four pounds. That's about 1/3 as much as she should weigh. She was so emaciated, you could see her bones through her fur. Honestly, when I first saw her, I thought, there's no way. I thought I was going to have to put her down that day, before she actually starved to death.
But I also noticed that her eyes were gooked up, and from my experience with critters and cancer, that's an unusual symptom. Messy eyes usually mean infection. When I spoke with the vet, she told me that Duma's intestines had been inflamed, which she had chalked up to diarrhea due to a bad reaction to the thyroid medicine she had been on (since has been changed). I told her about Duma's eyes and asked her if the bloodwork and mass and inflammation could be explained by infection. If the mass is a cyst, and not a tumor; so the vet took a second look at the bloodwork and said that yes, in fact it seemed MORE likely that the abnormal levels were a result of infection, now that she was looking for it, and the gummy eyes confirmed that if there wasn't an infection before, there was one now.
So I brought her to the vet and they gave her a good dose of antibiotics and showed me how to give her a water hump (less kinky than it sounds), basically you pick up a flap of skin and fill it with water--the body absorbs it, so an animal who is having trouble drinking, like Duma was, they can hydrate themselves without having to consume water. It's better than an IV drip because it allows freedom of movement.
A day later, Duma is eating voraciously, meowing, purring when I pet her, looking me in the eyes, and climbing the stairs. Before, it was like she was in autopilot; she couldn't look up, she couldn't jump, she could barely stand up, and it was like she didn't realize I was there. She ate, drank, and used the litterbox, and she slept, pathetically, on a blanket on the floor. She had gotten a little better with me staying up all night with her, feeding and cleaning her (she smelled so bad, ugh), but the antibiotics were like an overnight miracle. By this morning, she was her old self again, as much as she could be with her eyes still messy and her poor emaciated body.
But she us eating, and she gained two ounces of weight in ONE DAY. So her body is now processing her food and putting on the pounds....and it's possible that a combination of infection and bad reaction to the old thyroid meds were the cause of both the horrible blood levels, weight loss and the liver mass. It us also possible that the mass is cancerous, but is not the cause of the weight loss. In any case, if we can actually get Duma back to a healthy weight, we can look further into investigating that mass. It's all a question of waiting, now. But I'm really glad I spoke to the vet, because I honestly don't think they would have looked at the bloodwork in context of infection if I hadn't brought it up.
Duma has always been basically healthy. She is a tough cat and has taken a lot of hardship and random weird illness in stride. On the offchance it is NOT cancer, she might live several years, yet. But we have yet to determine this; it is just as likely that all we've done is buy her a few more weeks.
