[Felvtalk] Ember

[Lance]

Hi everyone,

Please send healing thoughts, prayers, good vibes, and anything positive our way. Ember isn’t doing well. 

Just to recap: Ember is a 12 yro FeLV+. She was diagnosed with a pericardial diaphragmatic hernia last year. After consulting with several vets, I decided not to have the surgery done, as the operation associated with that type of hernia (involving the pericardium) is very tricky. Ember has had a good quality of life since that time, and I don’t regret the decision.

Recently, I had noticed that Ember wasn’t eating as well, but we’ve gone through these phases before, and they always resolved. She would eat a lot less of her food, and then she’d get back to normal. Unfortunately, as of the last few days, she seems to be off food almost completely. It doesn’t help that I’ve botched giving her abx and Nutrical, so I think she now doesn’t trust anything I might try to feed her.

We went to the vet last week, and Ember’s wbc was very low, even for her (3.0). I’ll talk to the vet about LTCI and ImmunoRegulin (I’ve done some research into wbc issues), but the main concern was that the vet found an odontoclastic resorptive lesion. The vet is fairly convinced that this is the cause of the decreased appetite, but Ember has also been wheezing and coughing a bit, and the vet thought hairballs might be to blame. I think she would like to see if Ember’s wbc doesn’t go back up (as it has in the past) before extracting the affected tooth.

Ember seems remote and somewhat listless. She laid on my chest earlier and purred some, but again, due to my poor handling of our experiment in Nutrical, she’d now rather I jumped in a lake. I’ve tried pretty much everything including fresh roast beef, chicken white meat, various kinds of cat food, and several treats. She’s eaten very little today. I’ll almost certainly be taking her to the vet tomorrow unless something miraculously changes for the better in the next sixteen hours.  We’re going to pick up some baby food, but I’m open to other suggestions. 

Just a week ago, she seemed pretty normal, responding to me as always—just eating less. It’s so hard to see them go downhill. I just hope that isn’t what this is.

Lance