[Felvtalk] Grieving, and need to understand about felv

[Amani Oakley]

Marsha

At 2 mg a day, a person would need a whole lot of vet pills to use on themselves. The normal dose for humans is 10 to 12 mg a day, and athletes use it at way higher levels to enhance performance. In any event, I would think that a vet could reassure themselves by just limiting the number of pills given over to a client to 50 or so at a time unless the vet knows the client very well, as mine do. Winstrol would hardly be the only vet medication that could be abused or sold if someone was of a mind to do that.

Zander was the only FeLV cat I have had, that I knew about anyway. I wouldn't be so adamant about the Winstrol if it hadn't been for my serial blood testing throughout the time I was treating Zander, first with other treatments and then with Winstrol. The Winstrol was absolutely tied to his steady rise in red cell, haematocrit, platelets, and retic count and whenever I stopped for a time, his results would tumble.

However, I have mentioned on a few occasions that I used the Winstrol on a cat with nasal sarcoma who was 16. Again, I had tried a number of other medications and treatments for her to keep her eating and to keep the mucous being profusely produced by the sarcoma, under control. She underwent radiation therapy, and the vet who was looking after her at the time was amazed at how well the Winstrol worked to keep her eating, and keep the mucous production reduced, and commented that the cats are often lost because of loss of appetite, both with this condition and with the radiation therapy. She lived for 3 more years with the sarcoma.

I used it on a kitten who had come from a feral colony, who was very very ill - running eyes, nose, incredibly high temperature, not eating, laboured breathing, swollen belly, with a number of others from her colony being diagnosed with FIP and dying. I had her on a number of things for a while, like antibiotics, prednisolone, fluid therapy, etc. and was not getting any good response until I added the Winstrol. Within days, she began to eat, play, her nose and eyes stopped running, her belly deflated and she was left with some laboured breathing but nothing else.

I used it on a kitten who had been given to me because he was considered to have a touch of the "wobbles" - thought to maybe be some cerebellar hypoplasia. Instead of that, I noted that his anal sphincter didn't seem to be working properly - it was "relaxed" and stool not properly formed and "falling out" and problems urinating (wrong places, but also retention and crying when he went into the litter box). In humans, these symptoms are consistent with cauda equina syndrome, which is the result of damage to the nerves in the lower part of the spine. Then my husband and I noticed that he carried his tail straight out and didn't seem to be able to lift it straight up and there was a large bump at the base of his tail. I took him in to the vet - surprise - there was nothing they could recommend because the apparent spinal injury wasn't significant enough to show on xray. I put him on Winstrol, and a very short time after that (2-3 weeks) his anal sphincter tightened up and his urinary control improved. We thought he was over whatever problem there was but we found that he would occasionally do something that would seem to reinjure his spine - eg - trying to jump on the table and missing - and then the symptoms come back. Another few weeks of Winstrol clears him right up. We took him in for an MRI and they found a very very small lesion in the spinal column, exactly where I told them to look. They are unable to tell right now if the lesion is potentially cancerous or is the remains of healed injury, and they have asked us to videotape him the next time he starts having neurological symptoms (which include an almost drunken walk at his back end) and to NOT put him on the Winstrol so they can assess the lesion when it is at its worst. In the meantime, he is doing just fine. I wonder what would have happened to this kitten had he landed in almost anyone else's house - he peed on our bed about 2 weeks after we got him, and just kept peeing on the bed and on the couch, etc.  All the while, I had the distinct feeling he didn't WANT to pee there (crazy, right??! Try telling the vet that you have the FEELING that the cat DOESN'T WANT to pee in the wrong place).

I have used Winstrol in a few other situations where a cat hasn't been feeling well or eating well, and I have gotten good responses every time.

I didn't get any response from the use of Winstrol on one of my cats who seemed to contract some kind of virus from the vet's office, and developed kidney failure. Despite being prepared to dialyse or try paracentesis, she passed away. Very very recently, I came across an article that described a newly discovered virus named feline morbillivirus, which causes tubulointerstitial nephritis in cats, which results in potentially fatal kidney disease. I think that this is what happened to my beautiful Aphrodite. She was fine until I took her to the vet one day for a regular check-up. She and a second cat I had taken in, both came down with a flu-like condition, and both seemed to finally recover after a month (but it was a serious infection, needing fluids, etc.) when Aphrodite relapsed and her creatinine shot through the roof. WInstrol didn't have any effect on her condition, after everything else was tried and found ineffective.

So, this is hardly a great number for a scientific assessment, but by count, I have found it has helped in 6 cats (4 of whom had no other options at all for treatment), and didn't help in 1 cat. Also, because of the close monitoring of the blood work I did with Zander, there is absolutely no question in my mind that it boosts red cell, platelet, and white cell production, in a case of nonregenerative severe anemia which required blood transfusions to keep him alive.

Amani


From: Felvtalk [mailto:felvtalk-bounces at felineleukemia.org] On Behalf Of Marsha
Sent: November-27-15 7:49 PM
To: felvtalk at felineleukemia.org
Subject: Re: [Felvtalk] Grieving, and need to understand about felv

Amani, I think you already hit on the reasons for refusal earlier - the report about potential liver damage, but probably the bigger reason is that humans try to get hold of it for themselves to use illicitly.

What percentage of your cats that got Winstrol were FeLV+, and how many got it for other conditions?

It's too late for Peaches (FeLV negative with multiple myeloma), my little princess angel that passed on Sunday.  I had considered it for her anemia, but the oncologist suggested waiting until we knew how much she would recover just from coming off chemo.  Otherwise, we wouldn't know what Winstrol did and what changing her treatment did.  But even though her bone marrow was starting to bounce back a little, her kidneys went into acute failure, with BUN and creatinine so high their machine had difficulty giving an accurate reading, and they sent it to another lab on campus.  She was on fluids and a feeding tube over the weekend, and they were being cautious, but the fluids still began to put too much strain on her heart so they had to stop the fluids.  She was such a good girl, they didn't even have an e-collar on her.  Unless they took it off for visiting purposes...but I think I asked someone, and they told me she was doing OK without one.

Marsha

On 11/27/2015 2:14 PM, Amani Oakley wrote:
Perhaps but that wasn't my experience, and if you go on line, you find others who find it extremely helpful for chronic kidney disease cases, just like you mentioned. But Marsha, if the concern is that the results were "lackluster", then what could possibly be the explanation for the pure REFUSAL to prescribe it? Obviously, it that was all there was to it, the vet could just say, "Well, I don't think you're going to get too far with this stuff, but it's up to you if you want to give it a try". Given that the option people often get with FeLV cats is zilch, then why not mention that it is a possibility, though not a great one. When I am sitting, balling my eyes out and the vet is telling me, "so sorry, there is nothing at all that can help" and "put him down for his own sake - you wouldn't want him to suffer", then I certainly expect that I should have been told about Winstrol. It's not like we have a lot of options with FeLV. None of the options are particularly great or can be relied on regularly, and most of the options are way way more expensive than the Winstrol.

Moreover, I find it hard to believe they got lackluster results. I have used this stuff now in more hard luck situations than you would believe, and I would say that in about 80% of the circumstances, I have had a good to an excellent result. Sometimes, I get no result.

I find it hard to believe that I just happened to be lucky.

Amani

From: Felvtalk [mailto:felvtalk-bounces at felineleukemia.org] On Behalf Of Marsha
Sent: November-27-15 3:04 PM
To: felvtalk at felineleukemia.org<mailto:felvtalk at felineleukemia.org>
Subject: Re: [Felvtalk] Grieving, and need to understand about felv

Maybe part of it is because of lackluster results for the conditions they *were* using it for.  I found 2 "old school" vets in my area that had used it a couple of decades ago, then kind of forgot it existed after it got harder to find.  One said she forgot about it because it didn't make that big of an impression on her.  She had used it for anemia in CKD cats, I think.

Marsha

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