Hello -
I came across this site while trying to better understand how to care for our little Max, who is the most loving creature I’ve ever met and he is having a pretty hard time lately. Apologies for what will be a long post, but I’ll give as much background as possible:
He is 14 years old and has always been healthy except for a heart murmur found at age 2. However, during the past few months he started losing weight so we took him to the vet and they did bloodwork and said he has early stage CKD and hyperthyroidism and possible pancreatitis and suggested kidney diet food and thyroid medication. (Unfortunately the hyperthyroidism likely masks the kidney disease, so we aren’t sure exactly what stage that really is yet.) He was also vomiting sometimes but we thought it was mostly because he would go outside and eat grass and then get sick. (We quickly stopped the grass eating)
We started giving him the kidney diet food which he initially loved but quickly lost interest. During the few weeks after, he was vomiting again and losing weight and not eating much so we went back to the vet. (We were thinking maybe he was possibly allergic to the new ingredients like pork in the kidney food?) They gave anti-nausea meds and appetite stimulant and planned a follow up.
A few weeks after that (which was last week) he had a pretty rough day and wasn’t eating or drinking anything and was very lethargic and very thin so we took him right away to the emergency vet. They did more blood tests and ultrasound which showed thickened intestinal walls, and said it’s likely either IBD or SCL. At his age and risky condition lately we opted not to do a biopsy. They gave steroid injection and B12 injection and prescribed 1mL of prednisolone daily for a week, then 0.5mL daily, along with more anti-nausea as needed.
When we brought him home he was starting to perk back up and was eating and drinking a lot again and getting back to his normal snuggly purring self. He seemed to be doing much better for a few days, but then two days ago he vomited again, and yesterday he vomited again (like massive sudden projectile vomit) in the middle of the night and was coughing/sneezing a few times and was shaking which was so sad to see.
This morning we were deciding whether to go back to the emergency vet or not, but he did eat a tiny amount of food and drank water and was walking around so I decided to stay home from work to monitor him (and ask all of the helpful people here for advice!). I figured we were just there last week and not sure what more they’ll be able to do, and didn’t want to put him under more stress by taking him there unless it was absolutely needed.
In the mean time I have been reading a ton on here and went and got him a number of different limited ingredient foods (turkey, duck, rabbit) to try as many have suggested, just in case this is mainly IBD (my heart says it’s more serious, but trying to be optimistic). We started out with the turkey which he was liking so far.
At this point, I guess these are my questions:
- Assuming he is still vomiting and having diarrhea due to inflamed GI, how long would it normally take for the steroids to lower the inflammation and help absorb food and not be getting sick so often? I would have thought the steroids would work very quickly but maybe not? Is the dose possibly low due to his heart risk?
- If we are trying different limited ingredient foods, but we are also supposed to slowly transition from one food to another, how can we try different ones without spending weeks at a time to slowly transition? Is turkey too similar to chicken or other proteins he normally ate before?
- He is currently still eating Blue Buffalo tasteful salmon and brown rice dry food in addition to the wet food. Seems like we need to cut off all dry food and stick to the limited ingredient wet food, but we also want him to eat whatever he can to gain some weight back. What’s the best thing to do here? Should we look for a limited ingredient dry food or just remove it altogether? (This is hard because we both work so he is normally home alone all day and the wet food goes bad so we like to leave dry food out for him)
- I plan to ask the vet if he can switch to budesonide instead of prednisolone as often suggested here because it sounds like that would be less risky for his heart murmur?
- Is there anything else we can possibly to do help this poor little guy feel better?
Thank you all so much! I’ll add a picture of him so you can all see his cute little self in better times
I came across this site while trying to better understand how to care for our little Max, who is the most loving creature I’ve ever met and he is having a pretty hard time lately. Apologies for what will be a long post, but I’ll give as much background as possible:
He is 14 years old and has always been healthy except for a heart murmur found at age 2. However, during the past few months he started losing weight so we took him to the vet and they did bloodwork and said he has early stage CKD and hyperthyroidism and possible pancreatitis and suggested kidney diet food and thyroid medication. (Unfortunately the hyperthyroidism likely masks the kidney disease, so we aren’t sure exactly what stage that really is yet.) He was also vomiting sometimes but we thought it was mostly because he would go outside and eat grass and then get sick. (We quickly stopped the grass eating)
We started giving him the kidney diet food which he initially loved but quickly lost interest. During the few weeks after, he was vomiting again and losing weight and not eating much so we went back to the vet. (We were thinking maybe he was possibly allergic to the new ingredients like pork in the kidney food?) They gave anti-nausea meds and appetite stimulant and planned a follow up.
A few weeks after that (which was last week) he had a pretty rough day and wasn’t eating or drinking anything and was very lethargic and very thin so we took him right away to the emergency vet. They did more blood tests and ultrasound which showed thickened intestinal walls, and said it’s likely either IBD or SCL. At his age and risky condition lately we opted not to do a biopsy. They gave steroid injection and B12 injection and prescribed 1mL of prednisolone daily for a week, then 0.5mL daily, along with more anti-nausea as needed.
When we brought him home he was starting to perk back up and was eating and drinking a lot again and getting back to his normal snuggly purring self. He seemed to be doing much better for a few days, but then two days ago he vomited again, and yesterday he vomited again (like massive sudden projectile vomit) in the middle of the night and was coughing/sneezing a few times and was shaking which was so sad to see.
This morning we were deciding whether to go back to the emergency vet or not, but he did eat a tiny amount of food and drank water and was walking around so I decided to stay home from work to monitor him (and ask all of the helpful people here for advice!). I figured we were just there last week and not sure what more they’ll be able to do, and didn’t want to put him under more stress by taking him there unless it was absolutely needed.
In the mean time I have been reading a ton on here and went and got him a number of different limited ingredient foods (turkey, duck, rabbit) to try as many have suggested, just in case this is mainly IBD (my heart says it’s more serious, but trying to be optimistic). We started out with the turkey which he was liking so far.
At this point, I guess these are my questions:
- Assuming he is still vomiting and having diarrhea due to inflamed GI, how long would it normally take for the steroids to lower the inflammation and help absorb food and not be getting sick so often? I would have thought the steroids would work very quickly but maybe not? Is the dose possibly low due to his heart risk?
- If we are trying different limited ingredient foods, but we are also supposed to slowly transition from one food to another, how can we try different ones without spending weeks at a time to slowly transition? Is turkey too similar to chicken or other proteins he normally ate before?
- He is currently still eating Blue Buffalo tasteful salmon and brown rice dry food in addition to the wet food. Seems like we need to cut off all dry food and stick to the limited ingredient wet food, but we also want him to eat whatever he can to gain some weight back. What’s the best thing to do here? Should we look for a limited ingredient dry food or just remove it altogether? (This is hard because we both work so he is normally home alone all day and the wet food goes bad so we like to leave dry food out for him)
- I plan to ask the vet if he can switch to budesonide instead of prednisolone as often suggested here because it sounds like that would be less risky for his heart murmur?
- Is there anything else we can possibly to do help this poor little guy feel better?
Thank you all so much! I’ll add a picture of him so you can all see his cute little self in better times
