Short story: Yay!
Medium story: We're apparently still in the woods, but we have reason to be optimistic.
Full story: So, on Monday, they did an x-ray and some blood work. The x-ray showed what appeared to be one normal-sized kidney, and one small kidney. The small kidney looked to be about half the size of the normal one. This is not good. Her bloodwork showed that she only had 25% kidney function over all, or, about one-half of one kidney functioning properly. That's not good either. 10% function and under is considered kidney failure. Basically, this didn't bode well for the state of her kidney tissue which, if damaged, was ... well, damaged. In which case we'd be looking at a kidney transplant ... and, we wouldn't be getting a kidney transplant. Basically. That would just ... anyway.
On Tuesday, the news took an upswing. First, she seemed to be responding well to the antibiotics. She wasn't straining to urinate, and her kidneys didn't seem tender. Then they did the ultrasound and discovered two things: 1. Her smaller kidney is much larger than it first appeared. It's slightly smaller than the other one, but not close to the half-size they were expecting. 2. Her kidney tissue looked healthy. It looked like regular, functional kidney tissue instead of damaged, dead kidney tissue. So that's awesome. The vet sounded surprised and happy.
Today (Wednesday), they got the results of her culture, which showed that the antibiotic she's been on is already the best one. So that's good. However, her kidney levels haven't gone up at all. That's not good. However, because her tissue looks good, the vet is "optimistic" that she will get better, she just needs a little more time. I asked him if he'd seen that happen before and he said yes, many times. So, that's good.
She got to come home today, since there's nothing that they were doing for her there that we couldn't theoretically do at home, namely, giving her antibiotics and giving her fluids. This means that twice a day we have to give her oral antibiotics, but that's nothing new. I've medicated many a cat in my day. It also means that we have to give her a subcutaneous drip twice a day, which is really very quite new. I guess we'll see how that goes!
We'll take her back in on Monday to check her blood.
So that's her kidneys. In regards to her heart, she has hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. It's genetic. This is the thing you will hear about on the news when an otherwise healthy teenager suddenly drops dead in the middle of a basketball game. Lily has no outwards signs of it, either in her behavior or in heart sounds, so if her innards weren't already being photographed for other purposes, we never would have known about it. You know, until her spontaneous heart death at some point in time. So, that's not good. But now we do know about it, which is good. And we can drug her up for it. That'll have to wait until her kidney issue is resolved though, because (of course!!) the heart medicine may have adverse kidney effects.
Apparently my cat has more medical problems than I do.
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5 comments:
Yay Lily! Mostly, anyway. That does sound about 80% good news. Here's hoping full recovery is on the way.
Ach, so sorry you're having to deal with all of this. But I'm really glad to hear that you have reason to be optimistic, if guardedly so. I'm sending cyberhugs to you, and cyberpets to Lily.
How does one administer a subcutaneous drip to a feline, anyway?
You have a bag full of fluid, just like with people/in hospitals. We're using a hanger and a ceiling fan for our impromptu bag holder.
Then you stick the needle end in where they have loose skin (like the back of the neck), and wait until the appropriate amount has dripped in. There's fidgeting. There's a great deal of fidgeting. The end result is a lump of fluid under the skin, which is then absorbed into the body over a couple hours.
The first attempt went pretty well, all things considered. Actually better than the antibiotic, which she keeps trying to throw up. Not that I blame her: it's chocolate-cherry flavor. Do the people who make this stuff know that it's going to be administered to cats?
Yay for things looking up.
Re: Above
Yes, that's weird. It should be tuna-flavored.
Your cat sounds like my mom, minus the possibility of healthy kidneys. :(
I hope she gets better.
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