Krista's Care

[tarasgirl06]

No sign of the day-after disaster yet. I guess since yesterday's came after lunch, today's might not come until then either. If she, in fact, does have a day-after disaster later today, I'm going to try to sneak some slippery elm into her food on dosing days. Not with the dose because she needs to absorb that dose. But in the meals after to soothe the irritated linings. I thought about it yesterday and it's actually two days of distress with every dose because it's the dosing day and the day after until it's made its way through her. If I can't find a way to soothe that day after, I may try extending her dose to every four days instead of twice a week (currently Wed and Sunday.) In that way, she will at least have two good days between dosing days every time.

I kind of like underfeeding her. She gets perky and pushy and sits on my chest or climbs into my lap if I'm sitting in the chair between breakfasts. She joins me on the kitchen counter for meal prep a couple more times a day. Now, when I say I am underfeeding her, she's still getting over 9 ounces a day. She's just not getting the full 11 ounces from two cans. I open one can for the dinners and overnight and she gets another from the breakfasts through the day.

Mailman interrupted her mid-morning nap. Now she's laying just outside the office trying to convince me to feed her an early lunch.

Sounds like a good plan. Hope there IS no day-after disaster, though!
Wow, with 11 oz. a lot of cats would be as big as a house. Even 8 oz. is a lot IMHO. I know what the feeding guidelines say, but that's too much IMHO. My three are good on one can each per day, plus free-fed high-quality dry, and treats.
Hey, an early lunch is good, right? There'd be no complaints here, either!

 

[daftcat75]

Sounds like a good plan. Hope there IS no day-after disaster, though!
Wow, with 11 oz. a lot of cats would be as big as a house. Even 8 oz. is a lot IMHO. I know what the feeding guidelines say, but that's too much IMHO. My three are good on one can each per day, plus free-fed high-quality dry, and treats.
Hey, an early lunch is good, right? There'd be no complaints here, either!

Cancer robs calories. I feed her eight meals a day these days mostly to keep her comfortable. She gets pushy if I try to extend her past three hours between meals. I was trying to grow her portions in the hope that I could collapse some of those meals onto each other. But now I think it's just easier on her to keep those meals small and frequent. She gets 35 grams times two for each of the breakfasts/dinners and 32 grams for the lunch/afternoon and midnight/overnight meals. I am now dumping about 15 to 20 grams per can before opening the next one. I'm okay with that if she's keeping it down. Most of the time. Now, of that 10 oz I plate, the plastic baggies I use to warm the food take about a half ounce (about 1 gram of every portion I just can't get from baggie to plate) and there's probably a few grams per meal left on the plate or in the carpet because Her Toothlessness is a messy eater. So I plate about 9.5 oz and probably 8.5 to 9 oz actually make it in her. The rest I'm vacuuming from the carpet or washing off the plate.

I can't really advance her meals that much because I don't have that much remainder to work with if she starts asking for extra meals. An early lunch means an early afternoon meal which means she'll want a tweener to get her to first dinner. I will make exceptions when she barfs. Now that the Rawz rabbit supply issues seem to be resolved (just ordered another case from Sacramento even before I finished the case we're working on and the New Jersey case that arrived last week), I can open a "burner can" to replace a meal or two she's barfed on dosing days/days after. I call it a burner can because I burn a whole can on just one or two portions from it and end up dumping the rest after a couple of days.

 

[tarasgirl06]

Cancer robs calories. I feed her eight meals a day these days mostly to keep her comfortable. She gets pushy if I try to extend her past three hours between meals. I was trying to grow her portions in the hope that I could collapse some of those meals onto each other. But now I think it's just easier on her to keep those meals small and frequent. She gets 35 grams times two for each of the breakfasts/dinners and 32 grams for the lunch/afternoon and midnight/overnight meals. I am now dumping about 15 to 20 grams per can before opening the next one. I'm okay with that if she's keeping it down. Most of the time. Now, of that 10 oz I plate, the plastic baggies I use to warm the food take about a half ounce (about 1 gram of every portion I just can't get from baggie to plate) and there's probably a few grams per meal left on the plate or in the carpet because Her Toothlessness is a messy eater. So I plate about 9.5 oz and probably 8.5 to 9 oz actually make it in her. The rest I'm vacuuming from the carpet or washing off the plate.

I can't really advance her meals that much because I don't have that much remainder to work with if she starts asking for extra meals. An early lunch means an early afternoon meal which means she'll want a tweener to get her to first dinner. I will make exceptions when she barfs. Now that the Rawz rabbit supply issues seem to be resolved (just ordered another case from Sacramento even before I finished the case we're working on and the New Jersey case that arrived last week), I can open a "burner can" to replace a meal or two she's barfed on dosing days/days after. I call it a burner can because I burn a whole can on just one or two portions from it and end up dumping the rest after a couple of days.

That's great that your supply chain is improving.
Well, a lot of people think several small meals over the course of the day is better for health than two or three big meals. That's especially true for hypoglycemics. And yes, I know about this with people with cancer. It's hard for them to keep anything.

 

[daftcat75]

That's great that your supply chain is improving.
Well, a lot of people think several small meals over the course of the day is better for health than two or three big meals. That's especially true for hypoglycemics. And yes, I know about this with people with cancer. It's hard for them to keep anything.

Before the steroids, she was happy with six meals a day. But since she's started the steroids, I can't seem to get her back to the every 4 hour schedule.

There are worse ways to wake in the morning than a cat on the chest.

 

[tarasgirl06]

Before the steroids, she was happy with six meals a day. But since she's started the steroids, I can't seem to get her back to the every 4 hour schedule.

There are worse ways to wake in the morning than a cat on the chest.

OMC, yes!

 

[daftcat75]

My fur boss shows up at the office door about 30 minutes to 6 (end of work day.)


“So I’m going to need to you to attach a cover sheet to the TPS report.”

 

[daftcat75]

We had a day-after disaster. All over the apartment. Bombs in the office and chunks in the front room. I think she even left a toothpaste squirt near her barf. So I got a little overzealous with the cleanup. Two huge wet swaths, one in each room.

But. She seems to be feeling better now. She was dragging around most of the day. Now she seems lighter. As well she should. The apartment is smellier though.

At least she gets two good days before her next dose. Next week, I’ll try every four days rather than twice a week. That way she can always get two good days between the two disaster days.

 

[tarasgirl06]

We had a day-after disaster. All over the apartment. Bombs in the office and chunks in the front room. I think she even left a toothpaste squirt near her barf. So I got a little overzealous with the cleanup. Two huge wet swaths, one in each room.

But. She seems to be feeling better now. She was dragging around most of the day. Now she seems lighter. As well she should. The apartment is smellier though.

At least she gets two good days before her next dose. Next week, I’ll try every four days rather than twice a week. That way she can always get two good days between the two disaster days.

Poor Krista and poor you! Hoping the every four days works well. Gotta keep one's boss healthy and happy, after all!

 

[daftcat75]

She’s all tuckered out after half an hour in the filling station.

 

[daftcat75]

Seems to be back to normal again.

 

[tarasgirl06]

View attachment 333417View attachment 333418

She’s all tuckered out after half an hour in the filling station.

Awwww, what a little BEAUTY! Very glad she seems to be normal again.

 

[daftcat75]

I hate to have to dose her tomorrow and have it all go sideways again for two days.

 

[tarasgirl06]

I hate to have to dose her tomorrow and have it all go sideways again for two days.

I know. It's hard on her and on you.

 

[daftcat75]

Shame this won’t last tomorrow (or the next day.)

 

[tarasgirl06]

Shame this won’t last tomorrow (or the next day.)

Yeah, it is. But the longterm is for her to improve and feel better...

 

[daftcat75]

I wonder if that means we’ll have an easier dosing day morning seeing as she’s already gone. Though I’m sure it just kicks it down the road until later today.

 

[daftcat75]

I trimmed her dose a little. After all, I was seeing results giving her the wrong dose to start with. The syringe has markings for “drps” (drops?) and mL. I was using the drps scale the first week or two which came out to about half the prescribed dose. I didn’t half her dose this morning, but I trimmed it by 20-40%. The compounding is so concentrated, the amount I pull is so so small, it’s hard to really be sure whether it was 0.06 or 0.08 mL. But then, by the same token, she could be getting 0.1 or 0.12 in the past. It’s made doubly hard by having an eager Krista climbing all over me while I’m trying to pull her dose and prepare her medicine meal. If the reduced dose helps and it doesn’t set her back for the days between doses, I’ll ask the vet about getting a different concentration compounded to make it easier and more accurate to trim her dose in the future.

 

[tarasgirl06]

I trimmed her dose a little. After all, I was seeing results giving her the wrong dose to start with. The syringe has markings for “drps” (drops?) and mL. I was using the drps scale the first week or two which came out to about half the prescribed dose. I didn’t half her dose this morning, but I trimmed it by 20-40%. The compounding is so concentrated, the amount I pull is so so small, it’s hard to really be sure whether it was 0.06 or 0.08 mL. But then, by the same token, she could be getting 0.1 or 0.12 in the past. It’s made doubly hard by having an eager Krista climbing all over me while I’m trying to pull her dose and prepare her medicine meal. If the reduced dose helps and it doesn’t set her back for the days between doses, I’ll ask the vet about getting a different concentration compounded to make it easier and more accurate to trim her dose in the future.

That sounds like a great plan! I hope it can be facilitated.

 

[daftcat75]

I figured anything else I was considering--slippery elm, marshmallow root--was an unknown. The one thing I know by now is that there is a correlation between her dose and the disasters. If trimming her dose helps, I'll talk to the doc about it. If it doesn't, I'll talk to the doc about it. As for the others, I'll try those during her good days. If things do go sideways, I'll know it was the new things and not that they were ineffective in the face of her medicine.

 

[daftcat75]

very beautiful your Krista ...she looks so Good.
Determining the underlying reason your cat is not eating is the most important thing you can do for your cat.
A cat’s choice not to eat is medically significant and should be addressed by your veterinarian as soon as possible as you did.
Cats, unlike dogs or humans, get very sick very quickly if they are not eating.
Along with treating the underlying cause of not eating, there are medications that can be prescribed
by your doctor to stimulate your cat’s appetite.
In more serious cases, your veterinarian may also recommend syringe feeding a liquid diet
or the placement of a feeding tube to ensure your cat is getting enough of the required nutrients for optimal health,
however these measures are only recommended in conjunction with addressing the underlying medical cause for the anorexia.

I'm not sure where you came in on this thread. Nor do I expect you to read 148 pages to catch up. But you're discussing issues that are long in the past.

If you're beginning at the beginning, she had a feeding tube. She stopped eating because of her teeth (tooth resorption) but had complications with "eat what you'll eat until we can get past the holidays and into the vet" which led to an IBD flare-up, a pancreatitis flare-up, and liver inflammation. She was hospitalized for ten days and in that time she suffered a ruptured eardrum due to an over-accumulation of junk in her ears (probably allergy stuff from the Fancy Feast I was letting her eat to keep her eating.) This was all in the first couple of pages of this thread.

Fast forward through nearly a year and a half. She continued to have episodes where she would stop eating until push came to shove and her vets said they didn't want to pull any more teeth and told me to take her to a veterinary dentist. We got lucky and she got to see a wonderful dentist in two weeks in the middle of a wildfire that likely cleared his schedule when every other dentist was saying two months or longer just for an initial consult. The dentist had an afternoon cancellation after the consult (probably because of the wildfire evacuations) and performed the procedure the same day. I brought back a toothless Krista and her anorexia has been a thing of the past!

Currently though, her long-smoldering IBD which was previously well-managed through diet and probiotics morphed into suspected small cell lymphoma. She lost a lot of weight and was pooping liquid for months despite the steroids she was prescribed. I say "suspected" because I got her vet to agree that the diagnosis (an invasive biopsy) was riskier than the drug and we got her on a chemotherapy drug. That fixed her poops almost overnight.

So where she is now is that the chemo drug, chlorambucil (generic for Leukeran), upsets her gut and she has dosing day and day-after disasters in the litterbox and on the carpet: multi-box poops ranging from solid to mush and culminating in barfing. She goes through this twice (once on dosing day, once the day after) until the medicine has passed through her. Then she's good again with perfect poops and a wonderful temperament for a couple of days. Until her next dose.

This thread has basically been a poop journal for the last few months. But it has helped me figure out the dosing day pattern. Today I'm trimming her dose. If it helps, I talk to her vet about it next week. If it doesn't, I talk to her vet about it next week. I don't want her to discontinue the medicine and have her go back to pooping only liquids. But I'd love it if she didn't have such a rough time with the dose itself.

And her appetite? It's stellar! She's also on steroids so that's probably some of it. But I don't discount not having any more teeth to bother her like before. She eats well and she eats often. If only we could solve this last little bit of dosing day/day-after disasters and the poop pukes, maybe she can finally have some weight gain to show for it all. Even if she doesn't gain any weight back, she's happy and wonderful in the days between doses. I just want that to be every day for her for as many days or years as she has left. Personally, I believe she may be immortal for everything she's been through and still she remains so resilient and perky and beautiful and loving. She may outlive us all!

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