Re: [Felvtalk] Prayers needed for Bear
Michelle, I'm so sorry. I will be thinking of Bear with all the good energies I can muster. Has erythropoietin (Epogen) been considered? It isn't always appropriate, but can sometimes be a stop-gap until the actual treatment works. Crossing fingers, toes paws and whiskers for a positive turn=around. All the best, Margo -Original Message- From: lernermiche...@aol.com Sent: Dec 24, 2013 7:15 PM To: felvtalk@felineleukemia.org Subject: [Felvtalk] Prayers needed for Bear Turns out it does not look like FIP, looks like hemolytic anemia, where he is killing off his own red blood cells, and the vet simply did not keep him on a high enough dose of immune-suppressants so he crashed again. Now he is really bad. I don't know what his chances are at this point, but I do not think they are good, though the vets say he can turn around. He just got a transfusion and they are starting him on cyclosporine, a stronger immune suppressant. And doxycycline.Please send him prayers. He is FIV+, not FeLV+, though he has had as many issues as my FeLV cats did. I got back on this list looking for feline interferon, which I don't need, but one thing I know this list is good for is prayers. Please pray it's a good Christmas for Bear and he responds well to the transfusion and the cyclosporine. thank you,Michelle ___ Felvtalk mailing list Felvtalk@felineleukemia.org http://felineleukemia.org/mailman/listinfo/felvtalk_felineleukemia.org
Re: [Felvtalk] Turning neg. then pos.
On 12-24, Lee Evans wrote: ... had FeLv. She turned negative for a whole year, then suddenly turned positive. Wow Lee, I have never had that happen. My cats have either been FelV neg. or positive, or positive, later turning turning negative and staying that way. Do you have any explanation for what happened with your cat? Lorrie ___ Felvtalk mailing list Felvtalk@felineleukemia.org http://felineleukemia.org/mailman/listinfo/felvtalk_felineleukemia.org
Re: [Felvtalk] Turning neg. then pos.
I'd guess it was a regressive infection, and something triggered a recurrence of that infection. 2 years ago I had a house full of negative cats. Everyone brought in has been tested at least twice, some more. I now have two confirmed and one presumptively positive cats. I can pinpoint the stress for one, but the others? Not so much. I now have zero faith in FeLV testing. I put it in the same category as FIP. No definitive test. I might consider PCR, if I could be assured it would be performed correctly, but I think that unlikely. I have not tested the reat, but have vaccinated (probably too late) and segregated. Margo -Original Message- From: Lorrie felineres...@frontier.com Sent: Dec 25, 2013 7:16 AM To: felvtalk@felineleukemia.org Subject: Re: [Felvtalk] Turning neg. then pos. On 12-24, Lee Evans wrote: ... had FeLv. She turned negative for a whole year, then suddenly turned positive. Wow Lee, I have never had that happen. My cats have either been FelV neg. or positive, or positive, later turning turning negative and staying that way. Do you have any explanation for what happened with your cat? Lorrie ___ Felvtalk mailing list Felvtalk@felineleukemia.org http://felineleukemia.org/mailman/listinfo/felvtalk_felineleukemia.org ___ Felvtalk mailing list Felvtalk@felineleukemia.org http://felineleukemia.org/mailman/listinfo/felvtalk_felineleukemia.org
Re: [Felvtalk] Prayers needed for Bear
Michelle, I am sending prayers and positive healing thoughts to Bear, hope he starts to feel better soon. Sounds like you are a wonderful mom. Shelley On Dec 24, 2013, at 7:15 PM, lernermiche...@aol.com wrote: Turns out it does not look like FIP, looks like hemolytic anemia, where he is killing off his own red blood cells, and the vet simply did not keep him on a high enough dose of immune-suppressants so he crashed again. Now he is really bad. I don't know what his chances are at this point, but I do not think they are good, though the vets say he can turn around. He just got a transfusion and they are starting him on cyclosporine, a stronger immune suppressant. And doxycycline. Please send him prayers. He is FIV+, not FeLV+, though he has had as many issues as my FeLV cats did. I got back on this list looking for feline interferon, which I don't need, but one thing I know this list is good for is prayers. Please pray it's a good Christmas for Bear and he responds well to the transfusion and the cyclosporine. thank you, Michelle ___ Felvtalk mailing list Felvtalk@felineleukemia.org http://felineleukemia.org/mailman/listinfo/felvtalk_felineleukemia.org ___ Felvtalk mailing list Felvtalk@felineleukemia.org http://felineleukemia.org/mailman/listinfo/felvtalk_felineleukemia.org
Re: [Felvtalk] Prayers needed for Bear
Thanks to everyone for prayers. He needed 2 transfusions last night to raise his PCV enough-- the first one raised it only from 10 to 12 and he was still breathing labored, and the second raised it to 19. I am waiting to hear from the vet now regarding his pcv from this morning, 4 hours after the second transfusion, to learn how fast he is killing it off. Margo, his kidneys are not very compromised (they are a little from lack of oxygen from the severe anemia yesterday) so I don't think the erytropoetin is the problem. The main problem is he is killing the red blood cells off and doing it so quickly that it's impossible to tell at this point if he is able to regenerate new ones-- it looks like not but that happens if they kill them off at the bone marrow level, as they never make it out into the blood stream to show up on a test, so we need to stop the hemolysis to have any hope of figuring that out and helping him regenerate. It can apparently take up to 7 days to be able to tell. The crisis is in the killing off, and if we do not stop that nothing will help him. I am thinking that we added fuel to the fire and made this worse, me and my spouse, as we gave him an LTCI shot on Sunday in the hope it would help him regenerate red blood cells as it's supposed to help with severe red cell anemia. But LTCI works by stimulating the very thing that the immunosuppressives are now trying to stop, so I think we really screwed up by giving him that and probably accelerated the hemolysis. Kicking myself for that so much. I had asked the vet about giving it to him and she said she wouldn't just in case it had caused the original hemolysis, but she added that she really did not think it did and was being cautious, so when the anemia did not seem to be resolving and it looked like he wasn't regenerating my husband and I figured it was unlikely to hurt and gave it to him. But I think the problem is not causing the hemolysis initially, but that it may have accelerated it by stimulating the bone marrow that was already overstimulated in the wrong way. Ugh, a million times ugh. Anyway, waiting with baited breath to see if the treatments are working. If they do, he has a lot of other issues to deal with, so I think his long-term chances are very slim. But we just couldn't not treat, especially if this was caused by some kind of medication (they think it may have been his thyroid meds) and has a chance of being reversed. So my Christmas present this morning was a PCV of 19. Hopefully it was not just for Christmas morning and has not disappeared already. Thank you all for your prayers at this busy time of year, Michelle -Original Message- From: Margo toomanykitti...@earthlink.net To: felvtalk felvtalk@felineleukemia.org Sent: Wed, Dec 25, 2013 6:21 am Subject: Re: [Felvtalk] Prayers needed for Bear Michelle, I'm so sorry. I will be thinking of Bear with all the good energies I can muster. Has erythropoietin (Epogen) been considered? It isn't always appropriate, but can sometimes be a stop-gap until the actual treatment works. Crossing fingers, toes paws and whiskers for a positive turn=around. All the best, Margo -Original Message- From: lernermiche...@aol.com Sent: Dec 24, 2013 7:15 PM To: felvtalk@felineleukemia.org Subject: [Felvtalk] Prayers needed for Bear Turns out it does not look like FIP, looks like hemolytic anemia, where he is killing off his own red blood cells, and the vet simply did not keep him on a high enough dose of immune-suppressants so he crashed again. Now he is really bad. I don't know what his chances are at this point, but I do not think they are good, though the vets say he can turn around. He just got a transfusion and they are starting him on cyclosporine, a stronger immune suppressant. And doxycycline. Please send him prayers. He is FIV+, not FeLV+, though he has had as many issues as my FeLV cats did. I got back on this list looking for feline interferon, which I don't need, but one thing I know this list is good for is prayers. Please pray it's a good Christmas for Bear and he responds well to the transfusion and the cyclosporine. thank you, Michelle ___ Felvtalk mailing list Felvtalk@felineleukemia.org http://felineleukemia.org/mailman/listinfo/felvtalk_felineleukemia.org ___ Felvtalk mailing list Felvtalk@felineleukemia.org http://felineleukemia.org/mailman/listinfo/felvtalk_felineleukemia.org
Re: [Felvtalk] Prayers needed for Bear
Hi Michelle Sending healing thoughts for your little Bear and praying that the transfusions work. Lots of love and hugs to you both. Kerry On Wednesday, December 25, 2013 7:51 AM, lernermiche...@aol.com lernermiche...@aol.com wrote: Thanks to everyone for prayers. He needed 2 transfusions last night to raise his PCV enough-- the first one raised it only from 10 to 12 and he was still breathing labored, and the second raised it to 19. I am waiting to hear from the vet now regarding his pcv from this morning, 4 hours after the second transfusion, to learn how fast he is killing it off. Margo, his kidneys are not very compromised (they are a little from lack of oxygen from the severe anemia yesterday) so I don't think the erytropoetin is the problem. The main problem is he is killing the red blood cells off and doing it so quickly that it's impossible to tell at this point if he is able to regenerate new ones-- it looks like not but that happens if they kill them off at the bone marrow level, as they never make it out into the blood stream to show up on a test, so we need to stop the hemolysis to have any hope of figuring that out and helping him regenerate. It can apparently take up to 7 days to be able to tell. The crisis is in the killing off, and if we do not stop that nothing will help him. I am thinking that we added fuel to the fire and made this worse, me and my spouse, as we gave him an LTCI shot on Sunday in the hope it would help him regenerate red blood cells as it's supposed to help with severe red cell anemia. But LTCI works by stimulating the very thing that the immunosuppressives are now trying to stop, so I think we really screwed up by giving him that and probably accelerated the hemolysis. Kicking myself for that so much. I had asked the vet about giving it to him and she said she wouldn't just in case it had caused the original hemolysis, but she added that she really did not think it did and was being cautious, so when the anemia did not seem to be resolving and it looked like he wasn't regenerating my husband and I figured it was unlikely to hurt and gave it to him. But I think the problem is not causing the hemolysis initially, but that it may have accelerated it by stimulating the bone marrow that was already overstimulated in the wrong way. Ugh, a million times ugh. Anyway, waiting with baited breath to see if the treatments are working. If they do, he has a lot of other issues to deal with, so I think his long-term chances are very slim. But we just couldn't not treat, especially if this was caused by some kind of medication (they think it may have been his thyroid meds) and has a chance of being reversed. So my Christmas present this morning was a PCV of 19. Hopefully it was not just for Christmas morning and has not disappeared already. Thank you all for your prayers at this busy time of year, Michelle -Original Message- From: Margo toomanykitti...@earthlink.net To: felvtalk felvtalk@felineleukemia.org Sent: Wed, Dec 25, 2013 6:21 am Subject: Re: [Felvtalk] Prayers needed for Bear Michelle, I'm so sorry. I will be thinking of Bear with all the good energies I can muster. Has erythropoietin (Epogen) been considered? It isn't always appropriate, but can sometimes be a stop-gap until the actual treatment works. Crossing fingers, toes paws and whiskers for a positive turn=around. All the best, Margo -Original Message- From: lernermiche...@aol.com Sent: Dec 24, 2013 7:15 PM To: felvtalk@felineleukemia.org Subject: [Felvtalk] Prayers needed for Bear Turns out it does not look like FIP, looks like hemolytic anemia, where he is killing off his own red blood cells, and the vet simply did not keep him on a high enough dose of immune-suppressants so he crashed again. Now he is really bad. I don't know what his chances are at this point, but I do not think they are good, though the vets say he can turn around. He just got a transfusion and they are starting him on cyclosporine, a stronger immune suppressant. And doxycycline. Please send him prayers. He is FIV+, not FeLV+, though he has had as many issues as my FeLV cats did. I got back on this list looking for feline interferon, which I don't need, but one thing I know this list is good for is prayers. Please pray it's a good Christmas for Bear and he responds well to the transfusion and the cyclosporine. thank you, Michelle ___ Felvtalk mailing list Felvtalk@felineleukemia.org http://felineleukemia.org/mailman/listinfo/felvtalk_felineleukemia.org ___ Felvtalk mailing list Felvtalk@felineleukemia.org http://felineleukemia.org/mailman/listinfo/felvtalk_felineleukemia.org___ Felvtalk mailing list Felvtalk@felineleukemia.org
