Not diabetes, but health-related - hyperthyroidism

Status
Not open for further replies.
lynda and scruffy (GA)

lynda and scruffy (GA)

Member Since 2009
My Busy was diagnosed this week. He's only 12, and it's apparently very early stages - Total T4 was 3.4 (range 0.8-4.0) and Free T4 was 63 (range 10-50.) No noticeable symptoms, although he didn't have urinalysis or blood pressure taken during the last vet appointment. I did join the Yahoo HyperT group today. And there is an I-131 center just down the road....

Just feeling kind of overwhelmed by this, for some reason. We got through diabetes and epilepsy and cancer and kidney failure, but this has really hit me hard. Maybe because he's young and such a silly little cat or something. Anyone have any words of wisdom or experience to share?
 
Lynda, will you be starting meds soon? Blood pressure is good now?

Transdermal gel as mentioned by Deb is one form of treatment and is simple, pill form Tapazole or it's generic is another, BCP Vet compounds Tap also plus the I-131 treatment you mentioned. Your vet can get a free sample of the compounded tapazole, although it may just be the treat without med, I'm not sure, but at least you can see if it's an option. http://www.bcpvetpharm.com/products_vetchews.htm There is one other option, the thyroidectomy, but I'm not a fan of that.

As you may be reading, unregulated hypert can lead to hypertension, but that could take a few years to get to that point. Like FD you can often tell when the things are not well regulated by the increased water/urine. You may find your little man is grooming more or being more vocal.

I agree that treating FD seems easier. With my hypert kitties I couldn't check levels myself to see how they were, we vetted every six months for blood work, more often if they seemed off. I don't have any hypert kitties now, but up until 2010 I had quite a few. They were about teens when dx, although one was adopted at 16 years and only dx then. The others were dx at about 12 years also.

My sister's cat recently had the I131, her kitty was dx about a year ago. Her kitty had hock legs, just like with FD, but it was caused by the hypert, I had no idea they could get that, but kitty is fine now, legs are good and T4 is perfect.
 
I had. Hyper-T kitty and maintained her w/ oral methimazole (Tapazole) for 5 years. I put the tablet in a bit of canned A/D, mixed it up and she always ate it right now. After about 5 years, the dose got high enought that she had diarrhea. I did the I-131 treatment.

This unmasked renal disease and I was not told to monitor for anything, or I might've caught the need to treat that. She became very dehydrated, the excessive urination altered her blood chemistries, and she seizured. She passed on the way to the ER.

If you decide to do I-131 treatment, know it may unmask renal disease. If I had to do it again, I'd ask them to undershoot and leave some excess thyroid function as a workable compromise. It is pretty expensive, the cat needs to stay at the vet until radioactively safe, and once home, the litter needs to be bagged and kept about 2 weeks until it won't set off radiation alarms in the garbage dump, or wastewater treatment plant if flushable.

If the cat is able to tolerate surgery, partial thyroidectomy may help, but it is very delicate surgery.
 
Maui was diagnosed with hyper T several years ago - before the FD diagnosis. I initially started her on the tapazole pills and it was too high a dose - her WBC went down to almost 0 and I had to nurse her back to an almost normal number.

Then I took her for the I-131 treatment. She handled it without issue and it hasn't been a problem since.
If you decide to go the I131 route, take her in, have them do a complete workup including kidneys evaluation as this treatment can affect the kidneys. If she is a candidate for the treatment and you can afford it, then it's the easiest solution to this condition.

Of course the hardest part is the 72 hours of quarantine where you cannot even visit her and they will have very little interaction with her during that time - due to radioactivity.....Any personal items you bring for her, towel, t-shirt, even food - WILL NOT be returned to you. So, make sure whatever home comforts you bring you don't want it back. Regarding food, they won't waste it, they will give it to other kitties in the same ward who may not have food from home. (At least that is what my place did).

Many cats do fine with the tapazole, just start at the proper low dose. My stupid vet had me giving Maui too much and that is why she couldn't handle it.
 
Hi there Lynda :cool:

BK was diagnosed as Hyper T about a year ago and he is only 9 or 10 yrs old. the vet started him out on 1/2 of a 5mg tablet methimazole daily however it was too much. So he has been getting 1/4 tablet daily, ground up in his breakfast and the blood work has been in the normal range. Blood work is on 2nd tab of his ss and is current.
He has his annual check up this coming Tuesday and it will include blood work - hopefully he is holding in the normal range.

So far, so good :cool:
 
Monster was dx with hyper-T in November 2012 at 12.1 (0.8-4.7 ug/dl)
His BUN was high and his CK was 3684 (64-440 ug/dl)
He had an enlarged heart, heart murmur, muscle loss in back legs, heart rate > 280 and open-mouthed panting.

I was in a panic to say the least!

We got him on methimazole and I reduced the vet-prescribed dose to 1.25 twice per day based on advice from yahoo-groups hyper-T

He was tested 3 times with his T4 getting worse each time. The methimazole was increased so he was up to 5mg twice per day.
He had bad side effects - vomitting and diarrhea and scratching so much his face & throat were covered in lesions. I had him on pepcid and zyrtec to help.

The vet wanted to wait until his T4 was stable to check for any kidney issues but we couldn't due to the side affects and not knowing how high we would need to put the dose to.

He had I131 in Jan and his T4 is now normal and his heart rate is normal. His kidney values are also normal. He's put on weight and muscle and is almost his old self again.
He will have another ultrasound in May to check his heart and I'm hoping that will be normal/improved.

So glad we did the I131 but its not for every cat.
 
I really appreciate all your responses! I think that I'm struggling with this because Scruffy died because of kidney failure - the tumors were all gone, but his kidneys were done for. And he had that "dead kidney" smell...... I don't ever want to go through that again, if it's possible to avoid. The thought of uncovering previously unsuspected kidney disease terrifies me.

My vet is opposed to the use of the transdermal gel. (I started going to him back in 2004, a while after Scruffy was diagnosed with FD. He doesn't keep up with the latest on-line veterinary stuff, although he does seem to read journals.) He is also not a proponent of the I131 treatments, because he thinks that there's a possiblity of it being "too effective" and not being able to be fixed. There is an I131 clinic just a couple miles down the road. I need to explore what they offer and what their requirements are. I read Dr. Lisa's hyper-T website stuff, and since we can afford it, I'm inclined to think that that is the way we should go. I don't like the idea of experimenting with various dosages of the pills/gel, and having to do frequent bloodwork that terrifies poor Busy.

I did join the Yahoo hyper-T group, but I'm so overwhelmed by all the emails/digests that I don't know how I'll ever find time to read everything. Interestingly, one of the things members there said is that you don't have to go through the two-week isolation stuff after you have the procedure done - they do say you should bag the used kitty litter and save it, but that most of the other recommendations are unnecessary. One of their members actually used a Geiger counter to monitor the radiation levels after her cat came home from I131, and apparently found nearly everything was zero. We've got radon anyway, so...... Too bad it didn't treat Busy's thyroid, huh?

Thanks for sharing your experiences. I wasn't even sure if you were supposed to wait until the disease had "ripened" or something to do I131. It's hard to think about getting familiar with another feline disease, since I was so unsuccessful at saving Scruffy. :(
 
You can set the Yahoo group to special notices only, and then go to the group when you want to read.

There's usually a way to see a list of all the groups, and then a selection to Edit My Groups. This will display a table listing each group, how it can contact you, and how often you want it to contact you. Thats where you set it to Special Notices. That'll keep the e-mail deluge minimized.
 
Thanks, BJ. I have always found the Yahoo Groups format really hard to appreciate. (Maybe because here we have such a good system!) I have used the digest method for six years with the Yahoo EpiKitty group, but I guess there are a whole lot more cats with hypothyroidism than epilepsy..... For now, I've been segregating all the emails and putting the ones I've read into a Yahoo email folder. It's a pretty small folder at this point, comparatively speaking, lol.
 
yep - I do the daily digest but there's still a lot.
Did you introduce yourself yet? If you do, you can post the lab results to a files area and they will look at all the numbers not just the T4 and give advice.

On I131 after-care, I just bagged the litter and didn't let my 2 young kids touch him for 2 weeks.
Of course, I couldn't stop myself as I was so happy to have him back! I was going to isolate him but he just wanted to get into the old routine of sleeping on the bed and I just couldn't refuse :roll:
 
Hi, Denise.

Yeah, I did "introduce" myself. (And sort of intuited that I'd managed to step into some sort of minor conflict between two of the members, although I could have been wrong.) I posted some of the bloodwork in my initial note, and they asked for the rest, which I added. I didn't know about the stuff about putting it in files. I'm just feeling so overwhelmed, which is dumb, I know.

Isn't it a surprise how many people there are also dealing with diabetes? And how many are still quoting Janet and Binky, although they don't seem to get the whole carbs/protein/wet/dry stuff? I checked Busy's glucose level the other night just because - he was at 59 a half hour after he ate. He's apparently a good example of vet stress, because when we had the bloodwork done last week, his glucose level came back at 161!

Do you post there often? I could watch for you.....
 
when Maui had the I131 done -by law she had to stay at the vet 72 hours.

I was instructed NOT to throw out the litter or flush it for 2 weeks (due to radioactivity). what I did was take an empty litter container, leave it outside and put the used bagged litter in the container. At the end of two weeks, I took the closed container and threw it away.

that was the only instruction I got.

here is where Maui went -- some good general info to help you....http://www.gsvs.org/services/radioiodine.html
 
Thanks for that information sheet, Hilary. It is more expensive than I thought! I'm looking up the address for the local I131 center as soon as I'm done here.
 
Monster did stay for 4 days at the treatment center - I used Radiocat.
They phoned me every day to let me know how he was doing.

I don't post much to the group now since Monster had his I131.
He is due for a 2nd round of post-treatment tests next month so I will post then and give a whole-cat report.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top