Hello all!
I came across this thread while searching for Saddle Thrombus and thought I could share two of my stories about it in the hopes of offering some hope and the other...well to let others know that they can't second guess themselves about the tough choice you had to make.
One of our cats, B, 4 years ago was diagnosed with Saddle Thrombus when after waking up to go to work I found him splayed out on the floor in the living room moving his legs but unable to stand on them. He was 2 when this happened and is now 6 and after reading all the experiences I came to the conclusion that he is a one in a million shot of overcoming and not have any lasting issues from it at all. We decided to go through with treating him because he was still moving everything just couldn't stand on his back legs. After two weeks and a trip to the kitty cardiologist for an echo cardiogram verifying no heart disease, he was slowly able to put weight on his back legs and withing 1 month of his diagnosis was back to running and jumping full speed 4 years later with no relapse! I know his case was the rare one where he didn't have any underlying issues to cause him to throw a clot and that it was just random. Our vet said he's the only case she's ever seen where he survived and didn't have a relapse and pass away then.
We were not so lucky this time around with one of our other cats. He was my husbands cat before we met and he has had him since he was a kitten and was 12 years old. This all happened last night btw. We were making dinner in the kitchen and Spazz was acting normal and jumped on the counter like to lay down and wait for us to give him some chicken like the cat servants we are, lol. He then got up to move to the other side of the counter and I had turned around as he was doing that and notices he stumbled a bit while walking. At first I though it was just because he miss-stepped walking over the keyboards of the laptop (he's done that before). But he was getting worse and worse with trying to move and walk on his back legs and then we realized something was wrong. He was breathing really heavy and we notices his chest a bit shaky as he was trying to breath. We rushed to the emergency vet and they took him back. She came in and told us it was Saddle Thrombus and that he likely threw another clot in the back as she was looking him over as his front leg was starting to go limp. There was some crackling in his chest and we made the horrible choice no pet parent should have to make of weather or not to treat or put him to sleep. We chose to put him to sleep as the vet said he would be on 4 medications for his heart, blood and blood pressure and possibly kidneys. I know we did the right thing as he was suffering and he is now at peace.
I just wanted to tell my story about the two times I've been confronted with Saddle Thrombus and it had two extremely different outcomes. If that can help anyone possibly spot Saddle Thrombus as it's happening and they can get to the vet it can make a difference possibly then that's good! We didn't see it happen for B, but we witnessed it happen before or eyes to Spazz not knowing what it was.
I came across this thread while searching for Saddle Thrombus and thought I could share two of my stories about it in the hopes of offering some hope and the other...well to let others know that they can't second guess themselves about the tough choice you had to make.
One of our cats, B, 4 years ago was diagnosed with Saddle Thrombus when after waking up to go to work I found him splayed out on the floor in the living room moving his legs but unable to stand on them. He was 2 when this happened and is now 6 and after reading all the experiences I came to the conclusion that he is a one in a million shot of overcoming and not have any lasting issues from it at all. We decided to go through with treating him because he was still moving everything just couldn't stand on his back legs. After two weeks and a trip to the kitty cardiologist for an echo cardiogram verifying no heart disease, he was slowly able to put weight on his back legs and withing 1 month of his diagnosis was back to running and jumping full speed 4 years later with no relapse! I know his case was the rare one where he didn't have any underlying issues to cause him to throw a clot and that it was just random. Our vet said he's the only case she's ever seen where he survived and didn't have a relapse and pass away then.
We were not so lucky this time around with one of our other cats. He was my husbands cat before we met and he has had him since he was a kitten and was 12 years old. This all happened last night btw. We were making dinner in the kitchen and Spazz was acting normal and jumped on the counter like to lay down and wait for us to give him some chicken like the cat servants we are, lol. He then got up to move to the other side of the counter and I had turned around as he was doing that and notices he stumbled a bit while walking. At first I though it was just because he miss-stepped walking over the keyboards of the laptop (he's done that before). But he was getting worse and worse with trying to move and walk on his back legs and then we realized something was wrong. He was breathing really heavy and we notices his chest a bit shaky as he was trying to breath. We rushed to the emergency vet and they took him back. She came in and told us it was Saddle Thrombus and that he likely threw another clot in the back as she was looking him over as his front leg was starting to go limp. There was some crackling in his chest and we made the horrible choice no pet parent should have to make of weather or not to treat or put him to sleep. We chose to put him to sleep as the vet said he would be on 4 medications for his heart, blood and blood pressure and possibly kidneys. I know we did the right thing as he was suffering and he is now at peace.
I just wanted to tell my story about the two times I've been confronted with Saddle Thrombus and it had two extremely different outcomes. If that can help anyone possibly spot Saddle Thrombus as it's happening and they can get to the vet it can make a difference possibly then that's good! We didn't see it happen for B, but we witnessed it happen before or eyes to Spazz not knowing what it was.