Mijo AMPS 144, +2 78, +3 76 UTI HELP!

[DaveL]

Hello- As you can see from Mijo chart he has been doing very good on his counts lately! He seems to have stopped bouncing and his body seems to have started to get use to the insulin. Fingers crossed! He does seem to get in the black at night, but his numbers are finally starting to stabilize.

Just noticed today a small amount of pee outside his litter box, and he has going back and forth to litter box several times with not a lot of pee coming out. I will continue to monitor this. He had a UTI exactly 2 months ago. He barley ever got them before he was diagnosed with diabetes..



I give this on the regular: 2-3 times a week. I can start giving it every day.

https://www.amazon.com/UroMAXX-Urin...mula/dp/B00198SSMO/?tag=felinediabetesfdmb-20

Does anyone have experience with a cat developing these a lot? Do I just continue to monitor and is there anything I can do at home before I go to vet again? It gets pricey going back and forth with vet if this a UTI again. Thank you for the help!

 

[Amy & Herman]

I have little experience but am dealing with a UTI in my boy now so am curious what the others have to say!

 

[Angela & Cleo]

Mijo's numbers are looking great! Not all bladder issues are infections. Here is a link with more about this topic: https://catinfo.org/feline-urinary-tract-diseases/
Do you think you can get a clean catch and bring it to the Vet so they can examine the urine?

 

[Nimi S]

I don’t know if a urinary tract issue is one of those things that can be dealt with at home without veterinary intervention. We can of course do things to prevent it from occurring in the first place.
The link Angela shared has a lot of useful info. I wish I’d come across it a year ago.

Just sharing my experience with UTIs/ urinary blockages. Some of it is extreme, some of it pretty mild. I don’t mean to alarm you

Urinary blockages get bad pretty fast especially if a cat has a history of recurring UTIs. Recently my friend’s cat had to have a PU surgery (perineal urethrostomy) as a last resort to save his bladder. He was prone to UTIs (probably a consequence of eating dry food and the cat not being much of a water-drinker) and the most recent bout ended up with a 15-day catheterisation and him getting subcutaneous fluids to flush his bladder. But his bladder was badly blocked and he had to have a cystostomy to remove floaters, apart from the PU surgery to create a new urinary opening that decreases the length of the urethra and allows urine to bypass this narrowed region.

The PU surgery results in some complications (not always) such as the new opening narrowing requiring more surgeries, future blockages, leakages etc. Each surgery comes with a lot of post-op care. My friend’s cat had to have another surgery after a month to widen the new opening since it had almost closed and was leading to another blockage. This is quite rare though, as per the vet who operated on him.

I lost a cat quite recently to a failed PU surgery. He was a paraplegic incontinent cat prone to UTIs (which we would treat with ABx and fluids) but we never knew how badly degraded his bladder was till the end, because we didn’t get the usual signs from him. None of the vets we took him to regularly told us what we needed to watch out for.

This is of course one of the worst outcomes of a UTI but you really don’t want it to come to that. If you suspect that it’s a UTI, it’s better to do a urinalysis and a culture and sensitivity test to see which antibiotic could best deal with it. I think a UT inflammation needs to be dealt with differently.

My diabetic cat Shen had a UTI which I came to know about incidentally from a routine urine test I ran to check for ketones. Thankfully, a 5-day antibiotics course seemed to clear it. So it was a happy ending for a change.
After my experience with UTIs, I’m a bit paranoid and I’ve done a routine urine test a few more times to ensure I don’t get any surprises. It’s easier and cheaper to do it where I stay since I don’t need a vet’s prescription for the lab test, I can simply collect and deposit a free catch urine sample in a diagnostic lab. I do understand it may not be an option for you.

Do go through the catinfo.org website, it has a lot of info on preventing and managing urinary tract diseases.

Mijo’s looking good btw - it’s nice to see the greens amidst the blues now. Hope the streak continues!

 

[DaveL]

Thanks for the response! I guess I will do a round of urinalysis again to get in front of this! I did take a sample and have a test kit and it seems like his PH is slightly elevated. It just is another $100 for the test and most likely antibiotics again. Diabetes for cats is definitely not cheap!