I forgot how exhausting the first days home with a cat newly-diagnosed with a medical problem can be. Let alone doing it while also trying to keep the other "special care" cats from getting too jealous, learning about CRF & Anemia (thank the FSM for the two support Yahoogroups)...

The vets were relieved when I said that Max actually did have some of the recalled foods, surprisingly. They said that they could see there was a cause to his renal failure from its particular progression (I guess), so me saying it wasn't the food really had them frustrated and perplexed. If all goes well through the mire of red tape, his vet costs will be reimbursed.

Max was really iffy-at-best through the middle part of the week, despite his kidney values slowly improving. He even ended up needing another transfusion, and then having his fluids reduced because we'd pushed so hard that his heart briefly had trouble keeping it out of his lungs.

But after the second transfusion, he started rallying... By Friday afternoon, he spent a good chunk of his time wandering the room, and Saturday he was energetic enough that he was up and wandering/flirting steadily on his feet the couple of hours we were there! So, since we suspected his kidney values were at the best that the IV fluid therapy could do, he got to come home.

We gave our first sub-cutaneous fluid therapy to him tonight, which I had been dreading. Preparation too a long time as we had to learn all the steps, but the actual procedure was an extremely easy five minutes! I think the big thing is that we used 20-gauge needles on him, which are much smaller than the 16-18 ones we tried on Whoosey back in February. (16 is used for injections in goats and sheep!)

So he's napping on my mother's bed, and I need to get Bastian's meds done so *I* can get some sleep. Though just being able to relax is a huge bonus... Let's hope things stay calm for a while!

Tags: acc, crf, max, sub-q fluids
Current Mood: relieved

keepingawake just nudged me elsewhere to ask what was going on with Max, so I'm going to write a quick update in between one thing and the next.

He looks and behaves a lot better every day, thankfully. Sunday he urinated and then went back to resting... Wednesday, I put my hand under him and held some of his weight (as he's low on hind end muscle tone) and he was up/around eagerly exploring -- couch, each corner, doctor's stool, counter by stool -- for around 45 minutes, maybe more.

Progress with his bloodwork is really unpredictable, though. Each day until Wednesday, everything improved; then his creatinine stalled at 8.2. Today, we were told that his creat was in the 6.2 range. His red blood cell count had dropped to 10 today (from 20 after transfusing), so he was put on Epogen, and it's now up to 14. He also had switched from eating to not eating, so we're not sure WTF is with that.

The two internists that have followed him so far (they rotate) both decided independently that his renal damage is far too severe, and the decline far too rapid, to have been age-related. So, at their strong urging, we're now gathering receipts to contact the companies we bought from (Iams-Eukanuba, Nutro, Science Diet) in February. Eating the food is the only explanation we have.

I'm now researching CRF more aggressively, since his case is complicated enough that I want to be more involved in treatment decisions. I don't want his longevity or comfort left up to the recommendation of a single vet; been there, done that.

Tags: crf, max

Max is still at the hospital, where he had a transfusion yesterday, and is still on fluids/antibiotics as I write this. He's up, alert, using the litterbox without discomfort, wandering around, and starting today he also regained his appetite.

His levels are coming down, but it's fairly slow progress. Unfortunately, having his metabolic system "deranged" (as one vet put it) caused him to have one brief seizure at mid-day. The internist said that this is actually a common issue for cats with chronic renal failure (crf) to experience, and that they don't usually see full improvement of the creat/BUN until 3-5 days of fluids treatment. So we're on track, just behind schedule, and while he said some people choose to euthanize, he did say he felt it was "certainly appropriate" to continue treatment.

I feel terrible about this, because I had seen the signs of illness, but failed to recognize them or react. In retrospect, something was obviously very wrong... I know enough to have seen that, especially since I cared for his mother through the same illness. I can guess that I was too overloaded from caring for everyone else at once, but that doesn't make it any better.

My mother is hunting down all of the financial aid orgs we didn't have success with two months ago. (Hospital care is expensive on its own, but it's doubly problematic considering Bastian just had a pricey recheck-with-tests last week!) Meanwhile, I'm trying to find out from old chats whether Max was one of the cats that ate the food I had originally bought for Whoosey after her operation, since some of it was on the major recall list. Hard to say whether that would be a factor if he did, since it would be once rather than over a long period of time, but it would be good to know.

Since all of this isn't enough, we suddenly have an unexplained upper-respiratory illness going round the clowder. Most are handling it well, as usual, but Whoosey has an ear infection that I'm needing to treat with drops & lysine, while Bastian just needs a ton of extra lysine to make sure his doesn't cause heart-lung issues.

It's now time to get ready and go see him again...

Tags: acc, crf, max
Current Mood: exhausted