"Every day is a blessing."
Thus spake the vet, upon giving me the results of Ranger's blood work.
The immediate issue is not such a big deal: Spinach Cat has a urinary tract infection. I have antibiotics for that; it shall be handled.
But, his kidney levels are four times higher than normal. This is the same as it was in March, so it hasn't gotten worse, so that's something. But still with the 4x higher thing. Also, now he is anemic (probably as a result of the kidney problems). The mitigations are that I shall pick up an iron supplement, which he'll need daily for the rest of his life, and some trial kinds of kidney-medicinal cat food (it comes in both canned and kibble) to see if he will eat some or any of them. This does not, as you know, cure kidney disease; it just slows down the progress.
I confirmed with the vet that, since Ranger is eating and drinking and moving around and MOWing at me and all that, it is likely that he's not in any particular degree of discomfort beyond old bones; but as it progresses, he could begin to be. And I asked her, is there a standard or even rough guess at the progression timeline? If he eats his medicine and nothing else goes wrong, does he have six months or a couple of years or what? When should I start being afraid?
And that's when she said, "At these kidney levels..."
This entry was originally posted at http://serinde.dreamwidth.org/530807.html, where there are
comments.
The immediate issue is not such a big deal: Spinach Cat has a urinary tract infection. I have antibiotics for that; it shall be handled.
But, his kidney levels are four times higher than normal. This is the same as it was in March, so it hasn't gotten worse, so that's something. But still with the 4x higher thing. Also, now he is anemic (probably as a result of the kidney problems). The mitigations are that I shall pick up an iron supplement, which he'll need daily for the rest of his life, and some trial kinds of kidney-medicinal cat food (it comes in both canned and kibble) to see if he will eat some or any of them. This does not, as you know, cure kidney disease; it just slows down the progress.
I confirmed with the vet that, since Ranger is eating and drinking and moving around and MOWing at me and all that, it is likely that he's not in any particular degree of discomfort beyond old bones; but as it progresses, he could begin to be. And I asked her, is there a standard or even rough guess at the progression timeline? If he eats his medicine and nothing else goes wrong, does he have six months or a couple of years or what? When should I start being afraid?
And that's when she said, "At these kidney levels..."
This entry was originally posted at http://serinde.dreamwidth.org/530807.html, where there are
comments.