Re: Shaikha - back from vet, has a fever
We're back from the vet. She does have a fever but other than a very full bladder (which emptied just fine), her abdomen feels good. She's tender in the area of her pancreas, but okay with being handled other than that. He found no fluid or evidence of masses. My vet feels acute pancreatitis that is the root cause of this, as her kidney function tests were okay (just slightly elevated, not different than previously) and her urine looks clear so it is unlikely a UTI is to blame. Liver function tests look good too. The one very odd reading was a lipase value over 6000 (normal is 100 - 1400; so she's over 4 times normal levels). Though blood levels of lipase are not specifically diagnostic for pancreatitis, since her kidney values were not that bad most likely pancreatitis is the cause. He put her on antibiotics and I'm to continue giving fluids, buprenorphine, etc. for the next day or two. If she's not improving or if her temp gets worse, I'm to bring her back in. We are hoping that her appetite will pick up with more vigorous bupe thearpy and continued supportive care, including the antibiotics. We can repeat her spec fPL test but that requires a fast, so we could not do one today. My guess is though it will be in the stratosphere.
She seems weak and lethargic and has little appetite. I assist fed her with syringes this AM and she's kept it it down. Will continue to offer food but if she won't eat, I'll have to assist feed. She's down to 7.2 pounds vs. her normal 8 pounds, so I need to get food into her. She won't even nibble on dry food, so you know she's sick! I'm trying the blended food trick I used with my GA Tabriz. If she won't lap it up, it is easy to put in syringes and get down that way.
No ketones, so no worries there, but I'll continue to test her daily. I'm oping we can get the fever under control quickly. If it won't come down, then we'll need to dig further and likely get her on IVs and stronger ABs. She's spiked fevers before in bad acute attacks, so this would not be unusual in that regard. My guess is if we do the spec fPL it will be very high given how she's feeling. I was reading another article that talked about using plasma transfusions to provide clotting factors I plan to share with my vet as she's still bleeding odd. Apparently with some of these cats, disseminated intravascular coagulation can occur which may explain what I'm seeing (
http://www.marvistavet.com/html/body_pancreatitis__feline_.html). I don't know if he's able to do something that sophisticated or not. Her PCV is 18-19%, so it is a little lower but is likely just the pancreatitis that is causing that drop.
Am off to get a nap. I hardly slept at all last night and found a million typos already in what I'd posted. I think I found them all, but if some remain I'll blame it on sleep deprivation.
Glucose is high, but not off the charts. My vet said just to adjust dose based on how she's doing, since the fever will mess with her levels. I know what to do, but hope we can stay ahead of this -- and that she responds to the ABs quickly.
