Stroke

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calicocutie

calicocutie

Member Since 2017
Hi everyone,

So about a week ago I was able to declare my cat in remission. I took her to the vet who agreed and we would give her a few days while checking to make sure the numbers stayed low.

Yesterday I woke up realizing she was not with me then found her staring weirdly in the hallway. I picked her up and she yowled, her eyes were really strange. I rushed her to the vet who suspects that she either has a tumor or a stroke but that would require a $1500 MRI just to make sure and even then there really isn't anything they can do. I took her home.

She is was pacing, pacing, pacing. No vocalizations, seems confused, but she can walk. Her personality as I knew her seems gone but her ears prick up when I call her. I feel like she had a stroke and I know cats can recover from a stroke. Because she is walking, she swallows when I force feed her (but she is not eating or drinking or anything like that on her own). I would like to attempt keeping her at least hydrated and calories in her to support her to see if she will make a recovery. I do not want to call it too soon in case she does rally.

With normal cats one would use Pedialyte and some of those high calorie gels. But with her diabtetes (even in remission) I am scared to give her Pedialyte so have been eye dropping water.

So my question is this:

Do you have any items you could recommend (liquids, pastes, etc.) that I could use to support her while she tries to recover? Have you had this happen to you? Can you please give me some advice?

My heart is shattered on the floor. My angel, my daughter, my love...
 
Yes, this has happened to me personally. I don't want this to be about me but I need to tell you the whole story, I'll try and make it quick.
On June 4, 1997 exactly one week after I turned 50 I had a brain aneurysm leak. It might have been there my whole life, there's no way to know. It looked just like a garden hose with the bulge in the end. That's all it did, leak, and it's incredibly painful but in the end it was fixed with a scope and I was walking around 4 hours later. A lot of neurology is still a mystery even now but the human brain, and I hope your baby's brain, are capable of incredible things. I have read a lot about this; books with names like "The brain that fixes itself", watched hours of documentaries and talked to many doctors. I'm not the same person I was, lost a few IQ points, but I can still drive a car, type, poke things into my cat. It's not recovery, it's something else and the truth is no one knows what it is.
What your cat needs from you is stimuli. All the things that are familiar can come back, favorite places to get scratched and rubbed, favorite food, the bed she loves by the window.
That's all I have medically. I don't want to sound heartless but don't get roped into 3 MRI's and a bunch of things that won't help. Stopping internal bleeding is obviously important but some things will fix themselves.
You can ask me anything you want about personality changes, how they fixed me, what my life is like now at a later time. Sending you all the love I have.:bighug::bighug::bighug::bighug::bighug:
 
I have no experience with your kitties symptoms. However, it is so important your fur kid stays hydrated and eats otherwise she could end up with a host of other problems. If I were in your shoes, I would probably feed her whatever she will eat and give her the unflavored pedialyte and start monitoring her BG to keep on top of it.
I’m at my son’s Tae Kwon Do tournament. Later this afternoon I’m going to try and find some more info on my trusty Google machine to see if I can find any helpful info for you.
Hugs to you and your fur baby.
~Nicole
 
Hi, I'm new here. I haven't posted an intro yet, but thought I'd respond. It's fairly easy to administer subcutaneous fluids if your kitty isn't drinking. Your vet should be able to show you how. It only takes about 5 minutes, and is less stressful(to you both) than trying to syringe water into her.

Also, Hills AD Restorative diet is available on Amazon, but may be cheaper from your vet. Most cats like it, and it's suitable for syringe feeding if necessary.
 
I have no experience with this but if she won't eat and the vet suggested MRI-- maybe he would consider a feeding tube? If that's something within your budget... I think it is a bit of an extreme suggestion myself but if she's not eating it might be the only way to get enough food into her and less risk of aspirating than syringe feeding?
My heart aches for you. She's a lucky girl to have a mommy that is willing to give her a chance to heal. This hits my heart hard because my mom (she was diabetic too) had an anoxic brain injury after cardio-pulmonary arrest twice (10 minutes then 45 minutes). I knew she was in there and I didn't give up. Bless you for not giving up right away.
 
I can't imagine how heartbroken you must be! I have indeed heard that cats are better at getting over some neuro injuries than we humans. I'd like to second the sub-Q fluids, AD food, and feeding tube if needed. Sometimes, when diagnostics are not worth doing because of price or invasiveness, you treat for scenario which would be treatable. The way I'd approach this is:
- if it's a tumor, can we do anything about it?
- if it's a stroke, can we do anything about it?
And if yes, what? And start from there.

Regarding the diabetes, I'm not too sure what to say. One the one hand I'd tend to think that dealing with the immediate issue of not eating etc. is more important, even if it means you need to go back to insulin for a bit longer -- but on the other hand I'm not sure how grave the consequences of deregulating her can be. :(
 
Regarding what I said in post #2. Sorry for the drama but I find people still react to the word "stroke" the same way they do to cancer and it doesn't have to be that way. There are small ones and big ones, some just bleed a little, some people have them and don't even know it happened. As for the MRI I think Stephanie put it a lot better. MRI's don't see everything, it's not voodoo. I've had 4 of them and like an old x-ray they can be subject to interpretation. Be very direct with the tech and the doctors about what they expect and hope to see and what they cannot see. A tumor or mass can be seen with an x-ray and even then can be misinterpreted, it could be a cyst. This happened to our dog.
The fact that when you call your cat she responds is great. Keep up with mental stimuli, ask hard questions, believe in miracles even when you don't need one.
 
VaxGirl said:
Hi, I'm new here. I haven't posted an intro yet, but thought I'd respond. It's fairly easy to administer subcutaneous fluids if your kitty isn't drinking. Your vet should be able to show you how. It only takes about 5 minutes, and is less stressful(to you both) than trying to syringe water into her.

Also, Hills AD Restorative diet is available on Amazon, but may be cheaper from your vet. Most cats like it, and it's suitable for syringe feeding if necessary.
Click to expand...
Thank you. I got the Urgent Care a/d and it is the first thing she has eaten on her own!
 
Noah & me (GA) said:
Regarding what I said in post #2. Sorry for the drama but I find people still react to the word "stroke" the same way they do to cancer and it doesn't have to be that way. There are small ones and big ones, some just bleed a little, some people have them and don't even know it happened. As for the MRI I think Stephanie put it a lot better. MRI's don't see everything, it's not voodoo. I've had 4 of them and like an old x-ray they can be subject to interpretation. Be very direct with the tech and the doctors about what they expect and hope to see and what they cannot see. A tumor or mass can be seen with an x-ray and even then can be misinterpreted, it could be a cyst. This happened to our dog.
The fact that when you call your cat she responds is great. Keep up with mental stimuli, ask hard questions, believe in miracles even when you don't need one.
Click to expand...
I wanted to thank you for both of your posts. I found your story and your advice immensely comforting and helpful. Tarchi and I survived the very tough weekend. I cannot tell you how terrifying it was to handle a cat that just stared, mute and limp, unable to be the cat I knew. But with hand feeding, hand watering, time, love and finally prednisone I am seeing signs that she is attempting repair. For days she would blindly wander pacing for hours and hours unless I stopped her, not blinking so that I would fear for her eyes drying out. It was a nightmare. But, she is beginning to close her eyes, is sleeping again and I am seeing the glimmers of the girl I know including eatng on her own for the first time.

I was devastated and now I have hope. Your words played a big part of that. Thank you so much.
 
Stephanie & Quintus said:
I can't imagine how heartbroken you must be! I have indeed heard that cats are better at getting over some neuro injuries than we humans. I'd like to second the sub-Q fluids, AD food, and feeding tube if needed. Sometimes, when diagnostics are not worth doing because of price or invasiveness, you treat for scenario which would be treatable. The way I'd approach this is:
- if it's a tumor, can we do anything about it?
- if it's a stroke, can we do anything about it?
And if yes, what? And start from there.

Regarding the diabetes, I'm not too sure what to say. One the one hand I'd tend to think that dealing with the immediate issue of not eating etc. is more important, even if it means you need to go back to insulin for a bit longer -- but on the other hand I'm not sure how grave the consequences of deregulating her can be. :(
Click to expand...
Hi, yes I decided to start her on prednisone and insulin. I agree with how you tackled this completely
 
calicocutie said:
I wanted to thank you for both of your posts.
Click to expand...
Thank you for that! It's no secret here because we're all still a tiny bit anonymous but my own family still looks at me like I'm contagious and I'm just sick of it. It's not The Plague, it's not spiders in your hair. The 'surgery" was the best part, they did everything with a scope and I could have gone home that night.
Keep on doing what you're doing. :bighug:
 
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