Jezebel, a devoted companion and friend.
1995-2010.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Friday, June 18, 2010
Another Hypoglycemic Episode
Yesterday around 3pm, Jennifer noticed that Jezebel was acting more groggy and lethargic than usual. She decided to check her blood sugar, and it was 24, which is way, way too low. We gave her some karo syrup and some treats, and rechecked her blood sugar and it was 37. Then about 15 minutes later, it had dropped back down to 27. So we went to the vet.
They gave her some dextrose and force fed her some A/D food. After that, she ate about 1/3-1/2 a can of A/D on her own. So we brought her back home. At 10pm, we checked her blood sugar again, and it was only 172. That is a good number normally, but it seemed too low for a diabetic cat, and we skipped her normal insulin dose.
This morning, we checked again, and her blood glucose was only 212. Again, that is good, but much lower than we'd thought. She also wasn't interested in eating or drinking, and she still seemed to feel out of it. Since 11:30am today, she has had about 1 to 1.5 oz of her "Rad Cat" raw chicken food. That's all she'll really eat, though, and she still hasn't been willing to drink any water.
Since her blood glucose is still in a decent range, her behavior makes us think that she is probably having indigestion. We gave her some Pepcid this morning, and we hope that helps her out a bit. We're about to call the vet again to see what they think we should do about the refusal to drink water. As time passes today, she seems to feel better and she looks a little more alert now than she did a couple of hours ago.
I just wish she could talk sometimes.
They gave her some dextrose and force fed her some A/D food. After that, she ate about 1/3-1/2 a can of A/D on her own. So we brought her back home. At 10pm, we checked her blood sugar again, and it was only 172. That is a good number normally, but it seemed too low for a diabetic cat, and we skipped her normal insulin dose.
This morning, we checked again, and her blood glucose was only 212. Again, that is good, but much lower than we'd thought. She also wasn't interested in eating or drinking, and she still seemed to feel out of it. Since 11:30am today, she has had about 1 to 1.5 oz of her "Rad Cat" raw chicken food. That's all she'll really eat, though, and she still hasn't been willing to drink any water.
Since her blood glucose is still in a decent range, her behavior makes us think that she is probably having indigestion. We gave her some Pepcid this morning, and we hope that helps her out a bit. We're about to call the vet again to see what they think we should do about the refusal to drink water. As time passes today, she seems to feel better and she looks a little more alert now than she did a couple of hours ago.
I just wish she could talk sometimes.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Jezebel update
Jezebel went to the vet on Monday this week (April 5). The doctor said she had an overgrowth of bacteria in her intestines, which was causing the diarrhea. So, that is better news than we'd feared. We put her on some antibiotics, and the diarrhea went away pretty much instantly.
She is also a very hard cat to give a pill. She stuck her sharpest claw deeply into my palm on Tuesday night. I called the vet to let him know she was doing better, and asked for advice on how to handle her craziness when giving medicine. He said to just stop the antibiotics. Phew!
But we may have to start giving her a liquid supplement every day to keep everything moving through her guts more easily. I will probably need some training on how to control her. She is great with the insulin, but she is vicious when you try to put something in her mouth.
She is also a very hard cat to give a pill. She stuck her sharpest claw deeply into my palm on Tuesday night. I called the vet to let him know she was doing better, and asked for advice on how to handle her craziness when giving medicine. He said to just stop the antibiotics. Phew!
But we may have to start giving her a liquid supplement every day to keep everything moving through her guts more easily. I will probably need some training on how to control her. She is great with the insulin, but she is vicious when you try to put something in her mouth.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Jezebel's Situation
We took Jezebel in for an ultrasound on March 25th. We knew she was having some issues with her digestive system because she was having gigantic poop and she seemed to be feeling lethargic and sluggish.
The ultrasound showed that her internal organs all looked good, which was good news, but her lymph nodes were slightly enlarged and her intestinal walls were thicker than normal. Based on the ultrasound, Dr. Phillips said that she likely has either Inflammatory Bowel Disease or lymphoma, and possibly a condition called mega colon. The treatment for IBD and lymphoma is pretty much the same, unless you want to do radiation and more aggressive cancer treatments.
On Friday night, April 2, we noticed that one of the cats had diarrhea. On Saturday, we saw it again, but we still weren't sure who it was. Then, on Sunday morning, we saw red blood in the diarrhea, so we had to figure out who it was. We separated the cats, and figured out that it was Jezebel. So she had gone from having large, hard stools to diarrhea in the span of a week or so. Today, she's had diarrhea 4 times so far, and 3 of them had blood that I could see.
About 3 or 4 weeks ago, we started feeding her a couple of new canned foods from Royal Canin called Instinctive and Intense Beauty. Both had high protein and the Intense Beauty has higher fat. I'm not sure if the diet is related to the diarrhea. We were excited to feed it to her because she was eating it much better than anything else we'd tried in a long time, and she seemed to be holding on to her weight.
The other weird thing is that she seems to be feeling a little bit better over the last few days. Maybe just not being constipated is an improvement, but the blood in the stool is very troubling.
I'm going to call the vet first thing in the morning to see what we can do, but we're very worried about Jezebel and her insides. I don't want her to be hurting.
The ultrasound showed that her internal organs all looked good, which was good news, but her lymph nodes were slightly enlarged and her intestinal walls were thicker than normal. Based on the ultrasound, Dr. Phillips said that she likely has either Inflammatory Bowel Disease or lymphoma, and possibly a condition called mega colon. The treatment for IBD and lymphoma is pretty much the same, unless you want to do radiation and more aggressive cancer treatments.
On Friday night, April 2, we noticed that one of the cats had diarrhea. On Saturday, we saw it again, but we still weren't sure who it was. Then, on Sunday morning, we saw red blood in the diarrhea, so we had to figure out who it was. We separated the cats, and figured out that it was Jezebel. So she had gone from having large, hard stools to diarrhea in the span of a week or so. Today, she's had diarrhea 4 times so far, and 3 of them had blood that I could see.
About 3 or 4 weeks ago, we started feeding her a couple of new canned foods from Royal Canin called Instinctive and Intense Beauty. Both had high protein and the Intense Beauty has higher fat. I'm not sure if the diet is related to the diarrhea. We were excited to feed it to her because she was eating it much better than anything else we'd tried in a long time, and she seemed to be holding on to her weight.
The other weird thing is that she seems to be feeling a little bit better over the last few days. Maybe just not being constipated is an improvement, but the blood in the stool is very troubling.
I'm going to call the vet first thing in the morning to see what we can do, but we're very worried about Jezebel and her insides. I don't want her to be hurting.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
I heart cats
It is still a challenge to get through the day without thinking of Farley... but the other cats are all doing well. Fred has taken to propping his head up on things like Farley used to do. Sophie is a little less irritating to me, because she isn't always stealing Farley's food. And Jezebel seems to be doing pretty well with her insulin.
We are back to doing 2.5 units in the morning but just 2 units in the evening. We have tested her blood sugar a few times, and about 6 hours after a dose, her levels are around 150 to 250.
Some things we've noticed recently, though, are that Jezebel seems to have an increased thirst and she isn't eating as much as we want her to eat. But, she is eating some food every day and she is getting around fine, so maybe we're just nervous.
On February 25, I took Jezebel in to see Dr. Phillips, and he said she seemed to be doing well. Her weight was holding steady from a month earlier, but he did notice a thickening of her intestinal tissue. He said that might be nothing, or it might be a type of lymphoma. We obviously don't want it to be lymphoma, so I'm hoping he doesn't feel anything there when she goes back in a few days.
We are back to doing 2.5 units in the morning but just 2 units in the evening. We have tested her blood sugar a few times, and about 6 hours after a dose, her levels are around 150 to 250.
Some things we've noticed recently, though, are that Jezebel seems to have an increased thirst and she isn't eating as much as we want her to eat. But, she is eating some food every day and she is getting around fine, so maybe we're just nervous.
On February 25, I took Jezebel in to see Dr. Phillips, and he said she seemed to be doing well. Her weight was holding steady from a month earlier, but he did notice a thickening of her intestinal tissue. He said that might be nothing, or it might be a type of lymphoma. We obviously don't want it to be lymphoma, so I'm hoping he doesn't feel anything there when she goes back in a few days.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Our three cats
So now we just have Jezebel, Fred, and Sophie here in the house. And apart from Jezebel's diabetes, they are all healthy. Sophie tends to have some weird limping from time to time, but that is most likely from how she was declawed in a bad way. (not by me.)
Anyway, we are happy to know that so far, everyone is good. We have a new vet that seems to understand how we want to care for our pets, and I am trying to be more patient with Sophie and Fred--the orange cats--even though they drive me nuts.
Anyway, we are happy to know that so far, everyone is good. We have a new vet that seems to understand how we want to care for our pets, and I am trying to be more patient with Sophie and Fred--the orange cats--even though they drive me nuts.
Jezebel
So a week after we lost Farley, Jennifer and I had been out to dinner, and when we came home, we noticed that Jezebel was having a hard time standing up. We tried to get her to sit up, but her back legs kept giving out. So, in the middle of the night, we packed her up in a carrier and drove her to the Emergency Clinic where Farley had been the week before. It wasn't fun.
The emergency vets checked Jezebel's blood, and her blood glucose level was 25. Hypoglycemia...
This made us feel pretty bad. They had to put her on IV fluids to get her blood sugar up. So we left her there overnight. Around midnight, we headed back home, and I set the alarm to go off at 5:45am, so that I could get dressed for a meeting at work, pick her up from the emergency clinic, and drop her off at our regular vet for more testing and monitoring throughout the day.
I woke up the next morning when my phone rang and I recognized the Emergency Vet's number. In a panic, I answered, afraid that something horrible had happened. But, the receptionist was just asking me if I was still coming to pick up Jezebel. It was now 7am, and I'd managed to sleep through the alarm. I was going to be charged $15 for every 15 minutes after 7am that they had to wait for me.
I threw on my clothes and rushed up to get Jezebel. I managed to get there in about 18 minutes, so I didn't lose too much money for oversleeping. And they said she was doing okay. Her blood glucose was up around 150, but that was pretty low for a cat on an IV with sugar water.
Jezebel and I drove to the regular vet, and I dropped her off. I got a call a couple of hours later letting me know that she was doing ok, but her blood glucose was up around 500, so they took her off the IV and were going to give her some high protein food to try to normalize things. (A normal blood glucose level is 80-150mg/dL, so she was now way too high.)
So we took her off insulin for a couple of days to see how she was going to do. Then, we gave her 1 unit once a day, followed by 1 unit twice a day. We made a handful of trips to the vet for more testing and urinalysis. We managed to test her at home with a glucometer. And now, we are at 2 units of insulin, twice a day. It's probably time to take her back for a checkup, but we may just try to test at home for a couple of days and see what we find.
The emergency vets checked Jezebel's blood, and her blood glucose level was 25. Hypoglycemia...
This made us feel pretty bad. They had to put her on IV fluids to get her blood sugar up. So we left her there overnight. Around midnight, we headed back home, and I set the alarm to go off at 5:45am, so that I could get dressed for a meeting at work, pick her up from the emergency clinic, and drop her off at our regular vet for more testing and monitoring throughout the day.
I woke up the next morning when my phone rang and I recognized the Emergency Vet's number. In a panic, I answered, afraid that something horrible had happened. But, the receptionist was just asking me if I was still coming to pick up Jezebel. It was now 7am, and I'd managed to sleep through the alarm. I was going to be charged $15 for every 15 minutes after 7am that they had to wait for me.
I threw on my clothes and rushed up to get Jezebel. I managed to get there in about 18 minutes, so I didn't lose too much money for oversleeping. And they said she was doing okay. Her blood glucose was up around 150, but that was pretty low for a cat on an IV with sugar water.
Jezebel and I drove to the regular vet, and I dropped her off. I got a call a couple of hours later letting me know that she was doing ok, but her blood glucose was up around 500, so they took her off the IV and were going to give her some high protein food to try to normalize things. (A normal blood glucose level is 80-150mg/dL, so she was now way too high.)
So we took her off insulin for a couple of days to see how she was going to do. Then, we gave her 1 unit once a day, followed by 1 unit twice a day. We made a handful of trips to the vet for more testing and urinalysis. We managed to test her at home with a glucometer. And now, we are at 2 units of insulin, twice a day. It's probably time to take her back for a checkup, but we may just try to test at home for a couple of days and see what we find.
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