Hi all! Thanks so much for being such a fabulous support network! I have many
families in my life...and I feel like now I have a new one: my "feleuk family"!
lol
Took Slink to a new vet tonight - the one near my house. I was very pleased
with her! She asked if his regular diet is raw (which it was before he got
sick). I told her he's eating Innova Evo and she said her cats love it (I was
impressed to find a vet who knew wat Innova was! Then I remembered I got her
name from the owner of the store where I buy it. lol).
They did a CBC and his HCT is down to 9, but his WBC was up slightly. His
temp was 105.6! She was very real with me. She said what I had basically been
thinking: that if we didn't do something, he would definitely die and fairly
quickly. So she said we had nothing to lose by trying things and she was
willing to try whatever I wanted to.
I had faxed her 8 pages of info about IR and she'd read all of it, PLUS did
her own reading! She said she'd heard of some clinical trials but they'd been
stopped because it wasn't working...but that she'd read further and saw that
the reason they stopped them is because they were defining success as
seroconversion (testing negative for FeLV) and that's just not going to happen.
But when you look at symptoms and quality of life, it seems like it works
pretty well.
She wasn't as positive about the Epogen, wasn't sure that it would work. But
again was willing to try it. She also wanted to start him on Prednisone since
it can stimulate RBC production and would help with some other things. So, she
gave him a shot of Pred and Epogen (we were going to wait on the Epogen so as
not to start everything at once, but decided to just go with it). She also
gave me a bottle of Doxy and sent me home with that and Pred tablets. I'm
going to order the IR (that way it will get here more quickly) and then we'll
start that as well.
Their prices are extremely reasonable as well! They'll only charge me $20
per visit to do the IR doses (and since it's only $50 or so for the meds,
that's very affordable!). It'll be $26 for the Epogen shots which is just
paying for the medicine itself. The exam tonight was only $48 (though with
everything we did, the total bill was almost $200). But "dad" is being
wonderful and helping me out yet again! :) Also, I can get there in about 15
minutes on the metro, so it'll be nice and easy to go to his appointments! :)
After the appointment my friend and I dropped Slink at home (he went straight
for water! :)), and went out to dinner. When we came home a couple hours
later, his temp is now 102.8!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I did the happy
dance...and he looked at me like I was nuts! lol He's still pretty quiet, but
seems much more alert and comfortable. I gave him his clavamox, doxy, water,
and vitamins...and I think it was a bit too much cuz he coughed up some phlegm
and kinda gagged on it. So we'll be spreading that out from now on. The
Clavamox is almost gone, though. He's not crazy about having to take all that
stuff but he tolerates it pretty well.
At dinner my friend and I were talking about him and she said when she worked
at the vet she could tell when people brought their animals in whether they
should put them down or not...and she says Slinky has way too much life left in
him to put him down now. That was great to hear!!!
Anyway, that's the latest. Obviously no way to know if all this will work,
but we figure it can't hurt to try. I'm just thrilled to be doing SOMETHING.
Keep your fingers crossed and send us prayers for his recovery! Thanks again
for all your help and support!!!!
Marissa
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