[Felvtalk] Brock update

Amani Oakley aoakley at oakleylegal.com
Thu Apr 28 13:41:15 CDT 2016


Marsha

When Ardy started Tigger on the Winstrol, his haematocrit was 6, and as she said in her post, it was certainly looking extremely grim at such critically low numbers. The blood panel also came back with a comment from the pathologist that the anemia was regenerative. He has been on the Winstrol for about a month now, and his haematocrit was 12 this past Friday. You probably know that PCV and haematocrit are similar tests which tell you pretty much the same thing about the number of red cells in a sample. Tigger's most recent results also showed a significant surge in nucleated red blood cells and reticulocytes , which are the precursor immature red cells which have not yet matured into their final form of a non-nucleated red cell. However, their presence in fact shows that the anemia is no longer non-regenerative because Tigger's bone marrow has started to produce red cells again. The bone marrow is pushing them out early because of the body's depleted red cell counts and that is why the immature forms are being seen in the circulating blood.

Amani

-----Original Message-----
From: Felvtalk [mailto:felvtalk-bounces at felineleukemia.org] On Behalf Of Marsha
Sent: April-27-16 9:45 PM
To: felvtalk at felineleukemia.org
Subject: [Felvtalk] Brock update

My sweet FeLV+ boy Brock has taken a bad turn.  He has been doing really great, and only a week and a half ago celebrated his 1 year anniversary of being diagnosed with Restrictive Cardiomyopathy and Congestive Heart Failure.  Only 20% of cats with that diagnosis make it to the one year mark.  Brock is on 5 heart meds and 2 supplements, and has been doing great.  About 2 weeks ago, his appetite seemed to be a little off.  
Sometimes he would eat all his food, sometimes not.  He occasionally catches a mouse that gets into the garage, so I wondered if he was full when I brought his dinner. This past Saturday, he was really fussy about taking his pills.  He has always been really good about eating his pill pockets, no hassle for me, no dropping them into his mouth.  Now he is balking at taking them even after I dip them in wet food (and they are already in pill pockets).  I coax and coax, and have had to manually pill him a few times.  He will eat 4 and leave 1, then I have to give that one manually.  Or eat 2, and I have to give him 1.  Now he wants baby food, but only eats some of it, then more later.  He gets his supplements mixed with his food, 1 of which is potassium, so he needs to eat his food to get it.

He had a blood panel done yesterday and a physical exam.  The vet confirmed the enlarged lymph nodes I felt in his neck, and said there were enlarged nodes in the back leg area also.  Brock's PCV is only 18%, meaning he is anemic.  It is non-regenerative.  A needle aspiration was done on a lymph node, and the cytology should be back tomorrow.  My biggest fear is lymphoma, and it's going to tear through like a wildfire.

Marsha

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