I will keep everyone posted, Katherine. I'm hoping my hunch is correct that she doesn't have FELV but she's still very sick right now.
On Wed, Dec 14, 2016 at 7:56 AM, Katherine K. <[email protected]> wrote: > Randy, > > I'm sorry your baby isn't feeling well. What an unusual story you shared. > Did your vet say anything about hemobartonella? That can cause anemia, but > I'm not very familiar with it so I can't offer much more information or > advice there. There is a Yahoo! group called Feline_Anemia. It was pretty > active a couple years ago, not sure about now, but at least you could > search the archives. I had an 8 month old kitten die from anemia, but he > was definitely FeLV positive. > > Talk to your vet about prednisolone, instead of prednisone. My 14 yo FeLV > cat has been on it for a long time now. He also gets mirtazapine every few > days, which stimulates his appetite. > > Keep us posted on Curly! > > Katherine > > On Wed, Dec 14, 2016 at 8:40 AM, Randy Henke <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Our cat, Curly, is ten years old. We found her outside as a kitten and >> had her tested for FELV at that time. She was negative. She's been strictly >> an indoor cat since then and had no contact with any potentially infected >> cats. >> >> Three months ago, she wasn't acting like herself. Very lethargic and >> moderately dehydrated. We took her to the vet. She was running a low fever >> and her blood test showed severe anemia and low white cell count. The vet >> suspected immune mediated hemolytic anemia. He gave her some fluids, >> started her on an antibiotic for any potential infections and prednisone. >> Three days later she was about the same so we took her back to the vet. >> This time they ran an ELISA test to rule out FELV even though it was >> incredibly unlikely given her history. It came back positive. They drew >> blood at that time for an IFA test to confirm it and told us to discontinue >> the prednisone immediately. >> >> By the next day, Curly was feeling better and she quickly bounced back to >> her old self which I suspect was due to the three days of prednisone >> treatment. The IFA test came back negative. >> >> We were content to think the ELISA was a false positive because Curly >> seemed fine until a couple of weeks ago when she became listless and >> anti-social again. Another blood test showed her to again be very anemic. >> >> We are very confused about what to do. The negative IFA really has me >> wondering. From my understanding, that test is 99.9% accurate in detecting >> the second stage of leukemia. >> >> A negative IFA should mean only one of two things: >> >> 1. The cat is not infected with FELV. >> >> 2. The cat is in the early stages and has not progressed to the second >> stage of the disease where the virus infects the bone marrow. >> >> That would mean that, in order for the anemia to have been caused by >> leukemia, the IFA should have definitely been positive at that point >> because it would need to be actively compromising the bone marrow's >> functioning. >> >> I am leaning toward trying prednisone again, especially since she is >> hardly eating or moving around at this point. If anyone can point out if my >> logic is flawed, please do so. Any suggestions would be very much >> appreciated. >> >> Thank you, >> Randy >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 > >
_______________________________________________ Felvtalk mailing list [email protected] http://felineleukemia.org/mailman/listinfo/felvtalk_felineleukemia.org
