crf links/how to deal with fd and crf

Spader was diagnosed with early CRF on New Year's Eve '04. He was also a diet controlled diabetic, until a dental at the end of December of '06 put him
back on the juice. I went out with Janet's food charts in hand and bought various low carb, low phos, medium protein foods and did a hit or miss approach until I came up with the magic mix he ate. The other cans stayed in the pantry just in case he got picky. I bought various flavors of Wellness, Merrick, Nature's Variety, Hi-Tor Neo, PetGuard, Pinnacle, Iams, Newman’s Own, etc.

I had been doing fluids on my own with a lot of success. The vets matched the internet prices, so that helped out a lot.
Also, I put several cups of purified water around the house and purchased a cat fountain (The Cat-It). I also added water to his canned food.

He ate mostly the low phos Friskies Special Diet flavors and FF Chicken and Tuna. Sometimes he got picky and ate all meat baby food.

I ended up adding a phosphorus binder during the last year and a half.
Here are some links:
Feline CRF Information Center
Tanya's Feline CRF Information Center
I think I memorized and printed out every page!
FelineCRF-FD Yahoo Group
FelineCRF Support Yahoo Group
These groups are awesome. Saved my butt!

Mail Order CRF Supplies
I printed out the Brico prices and brought them into the vets.

How to give subQ fluids
Feline CRF hints
Foods list by Phos
http://webpages.charter.net/katkarma/canfood.htm
Feline CRF Documents


A wonderful section of info from Feline Outreach.
Feline Outreach

 

Thanks for posting this. These two diseases put together are a huge PITA!!! :smile:

 

My Fred had kidney disease for 6 years and I never ever put him on the renal diet (against vet's advice.) He was on canned, hi pro, low carb the entire time (Wellness, Merrick, Evo). His disease didn't really progress until year 6, around the time he was 19 years old. Even then it wasn't so bad and his numbers actually improved for some on reason (BUN and creat) in the last 6 months of his life).

A couple of words of advice:

if giving fluids 1) check for heart murmur, and if you can afford it, an echocardiogram to make sure he can handle the fluids. The vet did NOT tell me this--and my cat was 19 when he started on fluids--and the vet gave a VERY AGGRESSIVE (unnecessarily so) regimen--that first started making him limp in the legs (I KNEW it was the fluids because it happened after them, but the vet refused to believe me, he couldn't stand up after I gave him the fluids or would stand and collapse)....well the fluid were good for 3 months but then after that started wreaking all these side effects in my baby. And, then after 6 months induced cardiac heart failure....this would NOT have happened had I done an echo and found that his heart was a bit weak...and we could have been very conservative with the dosing and frequency of the fluids. My vet STARTED me on 150ml every day...this was wrong, Fred's numbers were not very high. So pay attention to this in you cat and question and START LOW and conservative--just like we do with the insulin.

After the cardiac heart failure--I NEVER GAVE FRED SubQ fluids again--he lived for another 10 months and his kidney values improved!! On healthy db food and no sub q.

2) If giving fluids, use the smallest gauge needle possible. The vets use 18gauge. This is like a spear in their skin. I experiment with 22, on down to the smallest sizes. I finally settled at 25 and 26 gauge. It was nearly as small as the insulin needle. Took a wee bit longer to give the fluids but Fred NEVER got that cold lump of water under his skin and it never bothered him to get the fluids. 25 gauge has a longer needle. 26 gauge is shorter so you have to keep your hand on the needle in the fur so if they move a bit it doesn't pop out. I had to speical order these needles from the online supply place. They were NOT on the website but when I called he would order them for me for same price etc. I think I ordered from the Brtico place, whoever it was that did cat kidney supplies. OH and ALWAYS order online, get the prescription from the vet and then order elsewhere. The vets completely bilk you and rip you off for these supplies.