Andy, What a great introduction to the wonderful Aggie! Glad that she & Crookshanks are accepting the baby so well. When my daughter was born, my cat Chaucer gave her the cold shoulder for months. Didn't go into her room, pretended all the baby paraphernalia was invisible, a definite "if I don't acknowledge its presence, it'll just go away" attitude. But during their 12 years together, my daughter turned out to be the person Chaucer loved best.
I was extremely interested in Aggie's history, especially your experience with treatments like LTCI and Interferon. Since there are so few clinical trials & studies to go by, shared first hand experiences are invaluable. Thank you so much for taking the time to write everything up. Will look for your posts about your continuing journey with Aggie... Kris B. ________________________________ From: Andy Domek <[email protected]> To: FELV List <[email protected]> Sent: Mon, October 11, 2010 2:02:07 PM Subject: [Felvtalk] Aggie Introduction Part 2 Our story continues with Aggie introduction, part 2.. At this point, I would have chalked the seizure up to the mirtaziprine if it wasn't for the fact that the day before we gave her the drug, Aggie was meowing very loudly and had thrown up a bit of a clear liquid. While my wife didn't see it, she wasn't covered in drool and wasn't disoriented like after the two known seizures. So, we really don't know what happened, but suspect it was a milder seizure type incident, and the mirtaziprine made everything worse. My vet, nor the vet I consulted with at UC Davis, thinks the mirtaziprine was the major cause, though they did admit that it might be what triggered the grand mal, and the later, smaller seizure. So, to be on the safe side, she has been on phenobarbitol for about a month now, with no further seizures (my wife is home with our 3 month old baby, so she would know). The first three weeks on it were rough--sluggish, lots of sleeping, and incoordinated with weakness in her hind legs. (Cat, not the wife, for those of you still reading!) As of now, she is pretty much back to normal, with just a little residual weakness. Nowhere near where it was, though. At present, still getting interferon every day, reloaded her with LTCI weekly for three weeks, and now moving back to what had become the sweet spot of every 2 weeks (next shot is this Saturday) and hoping for the best. When we next test her blood in a few weeks, we might see if we can screen for toxoplasmosis and cryptococcus (I know I misspelled this!) but didn’t have the cash to do it the first time around. Another possibility is that she might have been exposed to insecticide, as we had the outside of our home sprayed for wasps a month or so ago. The day of the first "incident" it had rained, and she was sitting for most of the day at the screen door looking out into the yard. She was sitting over the door jam (but still behind the screen, mere inches from an area that had been heavily sprayed, as it was a problem area, and the recent rain could have easily washed some of the toxins through the screen for her to breathe or even lick. Could have gotten to her paws, and she could have licked them--I don't know. Other possibilities are of course, a brain tumor, the FELV crossing the blood brain barrier, lymphoma of the gut that had metastatized (probably misspelled this one too) into her brain but avoided the lungs and hasn’t swelled up her lymph nodes enough that the vet can feel, or the aforementioned poisoning, crypto, and toxoplasmosis. Our other cat, who has lived with us for five years (and is FELV negative but vaccinated) was a cat that settled on the front porch of the house we had just moved into. So, it is possible he brought it in, but her immune system was strong enough to deal with it for 5 years. At this point, Aggie seems happy, weight is alright, appetite is good, and her zest for life is apparent. She doesn't mind being around the baby at all, and we are trying to make every day a party for as long as we have her. She is the protypical cat, in that she is alternatingly spunky, sweet, and antisocial and loves to chase my wife's hair clips all over the house. She'll ignore almost every other toy, but not those hair bands. Our FELV negative boy--Crookshanks, is the sweetest animal known to humanity. He loves the baby, and (supervised of course) will sit with her and occasionally nuzzle her feet. He will sit on the couch above me as I hold the baby, and groom my head with his tongue. He does the same to my wife, if he isn’t in her lap. He would love to groom the baby too, but that is a bit much! So—that is one long introduction! In all likelihood, we are on the downhill slope of our time together, but who knows—she is a spunky girl and we’ve been lucky to have her for so long. I’ll keep you posted as we go through the rest of our journey together. Even though we never met, all of you have given me so much hope and inspiration. To those of you who have lost cats, my deepest condolences--and know that I will continue to send good thoughts and purrayers, as Alice likes to say, your way. Peace, Andy _______________________________________________ Felvtalk mailing list [email protected] http://felineleukemia.org/mailman/listinfo/felvtalk_felineleukemia.org _______________________________________________ Felvtalk mailing list [email protected] http://felineleukemia.org/mailman/listinfo/felvtalk_felineleukemia.org
