Hi Realissa You are a newcomer to the group, and so I will tell you what all our group is already tired of hearing me say. I apologize in advance to the other members of this group, for my incessant repetition.
First, I agree with Marsha. As long as your cats are okay right now, don’t panic. Nothing is going to happen in the short term.] I would recommend the following: 1. Get baseline blood work done including a full haematology panel, along with a reticulocyte count. (this latter test is not usually part of the haematology panel so you need to ask for it specifically.) You can get a full biochemistry panel done as well, but chances are it won’t be too illuminating. However, it will give you baseline results. 2. If there are any signs of anemia at all, including low RBC’s (red cells), haematocrit, haemoglobin, abnormals in the MCV, MCHC or MCH values, or a low reticulocyte count, OR if any of the other cell lines (white cells or platelets) are low or showing abnormalities, I personally would not wait for anything worse results. I would start your cats on a number of medications: a) 1 mg of Winstrol (Stanazolol) x2 per day (very inexpensive medication, but your vet may not know it and probably doesn’t know how to get it – see more below) – for very sick cats, start at double this dose – 2mg x2 per day; b) 50 mg Doxycycline x2 per day; (again, check with the vet – you may start this at 100 mg a day for very sick cats) c) ¼ to ½ tablet of prednisone x2 per day; d) If there are any signs of problems with food moving through the intestines, also add ¼ tablet of metoclopramide given twice daily and preferably about ½ an hour before meal times in the morning and evening (it helps quell nausea and it accelerates peristaltic action which helps empty the stomach and pushes food through the intestinal tract. Now about Winstrol. This is an ANABOLIC steroid (not a corticosteroid like prednisone) and as such, you have probably never heard of it, nor has your vet, except in connection with doping scandals in professional athletics. Likely, your vet will be dead set against using it. I found that it was the only thing that helped my little Zander, after I had tried (a) blood transfusions; (b) injectable interferon; and (c) LTCI. My cat was in very very bad shape with an extremely low haematocrit that dropped to 5 after his major “episode” with the norm being 35-45 in cats. He was under an oxygen tent at that point because he had so few red cells that his body was unable to properly transport oxygen to the cells. He was basically in a coma. I had the vets give him blood transfusions, which got his haematocrit up to 16 – still a far cry from normal – but it bought us some time. This is when I tried all the various items mentioned. I also did weekly blood work to assess whether any of his haematology results were showing ANY improvements at all. None of them caused his three cell lines to budge upwards at all. (You may know that the FeLV virus infiltrates the bone marrow and causes infected cells to reproduce, thus filling the bone marrow with diseased cells that cannot produce red cells, white cells and platelets as normally occurs. With the bone marrow no longer producing needed blood cells, the ones in circulation eventually die off – life span of red cells for example is 120 days – and there is nothing to replace them.) After purchasing and couriering to my vets, these various treatments, I would try them for a number of months. None of them did a thing. All of them were extremely expensive. We got another blood transfusion for Zander when his haematocrit dropped back down to below 10. Again, he went up to 14 or 16 or so, and this time, he had had a reaction to the blood transfusion and so we were told that this was it. We could no longer give him more transfusions. While sinking into despair that I had no other options to try, I ransacked my supply of cat medications I had in my drawer. I found Winstrol, which had been given to me for another cat, years and years ago. It was just supposed to make the other cat feel better and perhaps increase his appetite – the other cat had FIV and died within 2 days of going the vets, and so I had not even had a chance to try the Winstrol on the other cat. I had absolutely nothing else and figured, what the hell. To my very great surprise, it ended up taking my very very anemic and desperately ill Zander, and turned him right around. It is a long term medication so Zander was on it for at least 10 months before his lab results (which I continued to run weekly) showed his haematology results to be perfectly normal, and every time I tried to wean him down, his lab results would drop again. However, after a year, I did wean him to lower levels, but I watched him like a hawk and any signs of paler than normal gums or paw pads, and I would give him a 6 to 8 week stint of Winstrol at the 1 mg x2 days or even down to 1 mg a day Be forewarned that your vet, if he has heard of Winstrol, will tell you that it causes liver damage. In my experience, the liver enzymes often do rise, but will fall back into the normal range once the Winstrol is discontinued. As far as I am able to tell, there is no lasting damage, and despite the fact that I have spent literally hundreds of hours on the internet researching this drug (for both humans and animals) I am unable to find any true, scientifically-established link to any actual liver damage. (Website after website recites that it is known to cause or may cause liver damage, but none of them have any scientific references or even case studies to back up this claim.) For your cats, if they are not exhibiting any symptoms, this may be more of an issue for you to consider. Most of us in this group, have had cats in desperate situations when we looked for something like Winstrol, so obviously, a risk of liver issues was a completely acceptable risk. However, I am pretty confident that the risk of liver problems is an extremely inflated and unsubstantiated threat. If you do decide to go this route, your vet needs to get the Winstrol from a compounding pharmacy, but unlike the other options out there like Interferon and LTCI, (which are pretty expensive) Winstrol is not – maybe a $1 a pill or something like that – I can’t remember for sure. However, this is just my opinion and experience. Zander lived 6 years after his “crash” and after the vets told me there was nothing to do for him but put him down. From reading the emails of others in this group, there are some who have had good experiences with Interferon and LTCI. I recently learned that there are four subgroups of the virus that causes FeLV and thus, this may explain why different people have different experiences with these medications. However, in my book, if I had the opportunity to do things again, I would have started Zander on Winstrol as soon as he was diagnosed with FeLV and when he had the first minor problem show itself. Winstrol, as an anabolic steroid, strengthens body (muscle and promotes bone growth, etc), enhances appetite and a sense of energy and well-being, so I think it is a good support for the system stressed by the FeLV virus in any event. Amani From: Felvtalk [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Realissa Dekraunti Sent: June-05-16 8:51 PM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: [Felvtalk] both of my cats are FELV positive. What to do now? Hi everybody. Thank you for accepting me in this group. I am just too devastated to think straight. I rescued two cats in October and I found out two days ago that they are both Felv positive. We did an Elisa test on Thursday, and it came back positive, and an IFA that confirmed the positive results. I live in LA and I don't know what to do, where to go, if there is alternative medicine. I love these two cats more than I could ever imagine and it is breaking my heart. Any input, help, direction you could give me, would be incredibly appreciated. They are FIV negative but FELV positive. I have heard there is a medicine called LTCI but that it is very expensive. I am also heard of Virbagen Omega, L Lysin, Interfone. There is so much info that I am overwhelmed.
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