Hi Michelle
Sending healing thoughts for your little Bear and praying that the transfusions
work. Lots of love and hugs to you both.
Kerry
On Wednesday, December 25, 2013 7:51 AM, "lernermiche...@aol.com"
<lernermiche...@aol.com> wrote:
Thanks to everyone for prayers.
He needed 2 transfusions last night to raise his PCV enough-- the first one
raised it only from 10 to 12 and he was still breathing labored, and the second
raised it to 19. I am waiting to hear from the vet now regarding his pcv from
this morning, 4 hours after the second transfusion, to learn how fast he is
killing it off.
Margo, his kidneys are not very compromised (they are a little from lack of
oxygen from the severe anemia yesterday) so I don't think the erytropoetin is
the problem. The main problem is he is killing the red blood cells off and
doing it so quickly that it's impossible to tell at this point if he is able to
regenerate new ones-- it looks like not but that happens if they kill them off
at the bone marrow level, as they never make it out into the blood stream to
show up on a test, so we need to stop the hemolysis to have any hope of
figuring that out and helping him regenerate. It can apparently take up to 7
days to be able to tell. The crisis is in the killing off, and if we do not
stop that nothing will help him.
I am thinking that we added fuel to the fire and made this worse, me and my
spouse, as we gave him an LTCI shot on Sunday in the hope it would help him
regenerate red blood cells as it's supposed to help with severe red cell
anemia. But LTCI works by stimulating the very thing that the
immunosuppressives are now trying to stop, so I think we really screwed up by
giving him that and probably accelerated the hemolysis. Kicking myself for that
so much. I had asked the vet about giving it to him and she said she wouldn't
just in case it had caused the original hemolysis, but she added that she
really did not think it did and was being cautious, so when the anemia did not
seem to be resolving and it looked like he wasn't regenerating my husband and I
figured it was unlikely to hurt and gave it to him. But I think the problem is
not causing the hemolysis initially, but that it may have accelerated it by
stimulating the bone marrow that was already
overstimulated in the wrong way. Ugh, a million times ugh.
Anyway, waiting with baited breath to see if the treatments are working. If
they do, he has a lot of other issues to deal with, so I think his long-term
chances are very slim. But we just couldn't not treat, especially if this was
caused by some kind of medication (they think it may have been his thyroid
meds) and has a chance of being reversed.
So my Christmas present this morning was a PCV of 19. Hopefully it was not just
for Christmas morning and has not disappeared already.
Thank you all for your prayers at this busy time of year,
Michelle
-----Original Message-----
From: Margo <toomanykitti...@earthlink.net>
To: felvtalk <felvtalk@felineleukemia.org>
Sent: Wed, Dec 25, 2013 6:21 am
Subject: Re: [Felvtalk] Prayers needed for Bear
Michelle, I'm so sorry.
> I will be thinking of Bear with all the good energies I can
>muster.
> Has erythropoietin (Epogen) been considered? It isn't always
>appropriate, but can sometimes be a stop-gap until the actual treatment works.
> Crossing fingers, toes paws and whiskers for a positive
>turn=around.
>All the best, Margo
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: lernermiche...@aol.com
>Sent: Dec 24, 2013 7:15 PM
>To: felvtalk@felineleukemia.org
>Subject: [Felvtalk] Prayers needed for Bear
>
>
>Turns out it does not look like FIP, looks like hemolytic anemia, where he is
>killing off his own red blood cells, and the vet simply did not keep him on a
>high enough dose of immune-suppressants so he crashed again. Now he is really
>bad. I don't know what his chances are at this point, but I do not think they
>are good, though the vets say he can turn around. He just got a transfusion
>and they are starting him on cyclosporine, a stronger immune suppressant. And
>doxycycline.
>
>Please send him prayers. He is FIV+, not FeLV+, though he has had as many
>issues as my FeLV cats did. I got back on this list looking for feline
>interferon, which I don't need, but one thing I know this list is good for is
>prayers. Please pray it's a good Christmas for Bear and he responds well to
>the transfusion and the cyclosporine.
>
>thank you,
>Michelle
>
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