Sick Kids

I’m sitting on the loveseat with my baby girl at my side and I’m very happy. She’s been very sick. As I wrote about back in January, she was sick back then with a respiratory-type sickness. She was sneezing and having to breathe through her mouth and it took about three weeks before she started acting back to her normal self. Of course part of the problem seemed to be that she wasn’t eating. I just assumed she’d lost her appetite and when she got better, she’d resume eating.

She never resumed eating and lost more weight. Before I went on vacation, I took her to the vet in Ft. Branch and she’d lost 2 pounds and they wanted to hospitalize her. While I was in Alabama, she spent four days in the hospital on IV and, presumably, nutrition. Mom went and picked her up from the hospital and brought her home to recupe. But she still wasn’t eating.
By the time Natalie and I returned from Alabama, Sophie skin and bones. I took her back to the vet and they gave her some steriods and antibiotics, and we were instructed on how to force feed her. Despite our best efforts at feeding her, she was still losing weight. Although she was very cute with her "poodle paw," as Natalie called it. I guess the vet had to shave her leg for the IV.

Holly talked to her vet friend and got me the name of another vet in town that she recommended. I called and got an appointment, had her records faxed to him, and he saw her. Baby girl was turning yellow with jaundice (or the feline equivalent) and he recommended taking Sophie to a "specialist." I, of course, had never even realized that there were such things. But he gave us the info and mom, Natalie, Sophie and I headed to Louisville, Kentucky.

Sophie had never been on a car ride longer than, say, 35 minutes. So frankly, I wasn’t sure how this 2-hour trip was going to go. About 30 minutes into the ride, Natalie opened the carrier to pop a hand in to pet Sophie, but instead baby girl’s head popped up out of the carrier and before I know it, she’s out and motoring around in the back seat checking things out. At one point, we had to stop at a rest area for mom to potty, and Sophie hopped up into the front passenger seat and she just made herself perfectly comfy. I truly think she was bummed when mom came back and she had to go back into the back seat with Natalie. But she snoozed beside Natalie in the backseat for most of the way and before we knew it, thanks to the 75 mph speed limit on I-64, we got there before too long.

The hospital was very nice and the initial doctor that we saw took time to discuss Sophie and his initial evaluation of her condition. Turns out that baby girl was one sick puppy, er.. kitty. Seems that when she stopped eating due to the respiratory ick from January, her body started converting fat and muscle tissue to energy. But in a cat’s body, the liver doesn’t process fat cells like the human body does. Instead they just stay in the liver and gum up the works, preventing it from doing its job of filtering toxins out of the blood stream. This results in a condition called "Fatty Liver." Then there’s this snowball effect. They kept Sophie there for five days, inserted a feeding tube, started her on insulin due to her elevated blood sugar, and (Natalie was happy to hear) they had to shave her other foot for the IV, so now she has matching poodle paws!

We’ve had her home since Monday and we’ve been feeding her through a feeding tube four times a day, including the horrendous midnight feeding. Of course we’d love it if she’d start eating on her own so we didn’t have to feed her through the tube, but nothing yet. There’s also the $250 in prescriptions that she’s getting, and the insulin shots. All of which we (including Sophie) are handling remarkably well. The worst part of the whole shebang is that we have to sprinkle these little test stripsin her litter box and when she’s peed we sift through it to find the test strips and see what color they are. We’re testing the glucose level in her pee. Again, the fact that we’re having to sift through the litter, to me, is not that worst part. It’s the responsibility of it all to make sure we figure out what color the strip is. I don’t like pressure!!

I’ve created a lovely chart in Excel and we have all the medicines she takes and when charted out, and I chart out the results of the pee strips. And I email this chart to Dr. Rizzo everyday. We have a follow-up appointment this coming Monday with Dr. Branson in Evansville, who’ll be coordinating with Dr. Rizzo from here, and I’m sure they have all sorts of vile medical tests stored up for the poor girl.

I’m happy to say, though, that she’s doing better, she has a little bit of her spark back, and this evening, after dinner, she’s just been sitting here on the loveseat with me being a sweetheart. It’s almost time for elevensies, so I should wrap up here.