Kitty Down: We Know Why... Now We Need to Know Why
I visited Munchkin this morning at the vet hospital. He's still very jandiced (I saw what his reading should be (between 80 and 120 iirc) and what his reading was (3000+)... the doc was surprised and so was I), still somewhat listless, and only ate a couple of treats from my hand (they recommended to bring food he liked so he would eat). His front left leg was completely bandaged up so that the IV would come out, and he didn't look impressed because of it since he couldn't sit up properly. But he was still purring and enjoyed me petting him (I made pics with my phone camera... will add them to the entry later tonight).
Talking to the vet, she concluded he had Fatty Liver Disease caused by the fact Munchkin simply stopped eating. Beacuse he stopped eating his body starting to use the fat stored in his system to maintain his daily calorie count. Problem is the liver isn't designed to do that on a massive scale. Clots ensue, and hence the fatty liver disease.
Now why he stopped eating? That's still being looked into. So far we know it isn't feline AIDs or lyukemia (thank goodness), but with his high white cell count the vet thinks it may be an infection or virus... not all of his test results have come back in so we're waiting for that.
On top of that, he's still not out of woods as they still don't know what caused him to stop eating. Until they have a reasonable explaination for that, he's still in serious condition.
Now the issue becomes getting Munchkin to eat again once he's out of the woods. Force-feeding is an option but not a good one as it can do more harm than good. So it looks like we may have to have a tube inserted and feed him via syrgine, meaning more time at the hospital to get the surgery done and monitoring for the first couple of days to make sure it will work. Then... as long as it takes until he starts eating on his own. Could be a couple of weeks or a couple of months... we don't know.
And it's going to be expensive. I hate to say this but I may have to return all the TV related goodies we got last week to make sure we can pay for it and still have some money in our savings account. This is something I'm going to have to discuss with Susan.
My poor baby... when stuff like this happens... it happens :(