I'm going to tell the whole story here and I'm looking to learn, to be a better parent in the future. I grew up with dogs, so I had no long term cat experience, and i adopted Coco the cat when she was 7. She was a very sassy lady and showed my husband and i her very sweet side. We loved her to bits. We work from home so were always around her.
Mid September Coco stopped eating. We took her to the vet and they took bloodwork, gave her fluids and an enema (they said there was hard stool there) found out she had a UTI (only abnormal thing in bloodwork-my friend said creatinine was high, but vet said it's normal. ), gave her a broad spectrum antiobiotic, and sent her home because they thought she was too stressed there to eat. She came home, ate for about 2 days, then started sneezing (vet later said she probably developed herpes virus from vet stress) and stopped eating again. We gave her veraflox (an antibiotic they wanted us to give her) and mirataz to stimulate appetite. She continued to lick her lip (sign of nausea) and hardly ate. Vet said take her off antiobitics, maybe that's causing nausea, and here i learned maybe it was herpes virus blocking her sense of smell...that cleared up - nevertheles not eating.
*i neglected to mention to vet, I think, that months before, she had been coughing but stopped. not sure if relevant.
after she was not eating again, we took her Back to vet for an ultrasound and an enema. Ultrasound came out clear. Vet gave us Royal Canin fiber response, thinking maybe she had stopped eating bc she was constipated. We were ecstatic to see, when she came home, she was tryin gto open the bag on her own and eating like a freak. but days passed, and she didn't poop. back to vet for enema, and lactulose. vet says she's never seen a case like hers, where bloods and utrasound are clear but cat is not responding to appetite stimulants. i later was told they did an x ray too but never received a copy, but apparently it was all normal.
That enema didnt go well, there was poop in her carrier and we had to ask vet asst to clean her (they should have offered!) She also threw up in her carrier, perhaps from the smell. the Vet asst. cleaned her. She came home and refused to eat. Still licking lips.
Back to vet for cerenia anti nausea shot (which i learned her was sily, zofran would hve been better.) come home, doesnt eat. pepsid ac doesnt help.
learned tricks to try here, like fortiflora, bonito flakes, tuna, etc. nothing works. i find the only thing she will consume is whiskas cat milk & nutrical. she still grooms, doesnt hide, stil jumps around. she was always a very sedentary cat. i know living on cat milk and nutrical is not sustainable. we take her to humane society for 2nd opinion - they say same as other vet, never seen a case like hers before. they say they can do some explortory gastro something or other. someone else tells me NOT to do that, she has been to vets like 4-5 times in 2 weeks and sressed out, try to nurse her back to health.
cat obsessed friend tells me not to syringe. at a certain point i see she is getting really thin and i realize i MUST syringe, and learn a lot here. the day after we syringe for the first time, , at 6 am i hear a thud. she has collapsed, and her back legs have given out.
i pick her up and lay her down and she is having diffuculty breathing, i tell my husband she is dying. he says let's syringe her water and food - i think she will not swallow and am afraid we will hurt her, he said let's try and prop her up. we prop her up, she laps up water and food from the syringe. at this point, i imagine this collapsing has happened bc she hadnt been getting enough calories. miraculously, her legs are wobbly but immediately after quick syringing she is jumping off bed. by the way, after this episode her pupils were huge and part of her eyes turned blue.
we syringing her the next day or two, she even started eating food syringed onto the table, it was a breakthrough. i did notice her dragging her hind legs a little when she was coming out of litter box. anyway, after she ate a little food off the table, we thought she had made it through the weeds, or there was hope. and she jumps off table, she has had enough. then i look and see her paw is completely messed up. for me, straight from hope to panic. i said my god, she broke her paw. i call 2 vets and they say they cant help, they dont hvae x ray machine, it's too late at nightt, we have to take her to ER. coco is staring at me with huge pupils and flopping around the room, she canot even find a comfortable way to sit. we immediately decide to take her to ER bc she looks so uncomfortable.
coco is very vocal in the uber on way to ER, lots of meowing.
ER vet tells me - she didn't break her foot. this is a blood clot. and the other morning when i thought she was dying, that may have been a stroke. also at the er, she was - i'm not sure if panicked or having some sort of episode, bc she was breathing so heavily. that haunts me. i shoudl have asked why she was breathing that way.
when i was laying down the timeline for the vet, i made the stupid mistake of saying 'we never put her to sleep bc she has such a strong will to live. she's not hiding, she's grooming, she's still spunky.. (although, i negelcted to mention, since the what we know think was a stroke, she was way more sedentary and her eyes were messed up - but she was still trying to jump off furntiure.) so perhaps because i said that, the vet didn't offer euthanasia as an option. THIS vet said her creatinine was on the high end. she said we can do a chest x ray, and that she thinks it might be a heart condition, fluid in the lungs, or cancer. and we were about to do the chest x ray when i realized - what is the outcome of treatment, anyway, for each of 3 conditions? and will any of those conditions helps solve the mustery of why she has been not eating? she said maybe fluid in the lungs would cause nausea. i said, "will she ever walk again?" she said it's not very likely, and she might be in pain. she also thought it was very very suprising that coco's back legs had recovered so quickly, and i had forgotten to mention that i did spot her dragging her hind legs out of liter box, but other than that she was walking fine before the paw blood clot.
now, if i had known from the beginning that this mght be a stroke/blood clot scenario (and not a foot break), which i had neevr heard of, i would have posted here or obsessively researched before going forward. but my husband and i just took the vet at her word, looked at each other and said she seems to only be getting worse, we didn't want to put coco through the suffering, we didnt even know if she'd ever eat on her own again or be able to walk, and we decided to euthanize our baby.
when they took her in the room, her eyes were wild, she was having troube breathing, and i didn tknow if it was panic or sickness. i couldnt even pet her, she was trying to escape out of the room and trying to jump off couch, i caught her bc i was afraid her catheter would fall off. this is what haunts me-- her spirit had that strong will. she wanted out of that room. my husband, who is so loving, put his hand on her pretty gently, that stilled her, and i pet her constantly as they injected the propofol, and then euthanized her.
of course now that she's gone, we miss her so much, and wonder if we did the right thing. what were the chances we could have saved her? what were the chances she could have gotten feeling back in her hind legs and paw? how much pain would she have lived with?
the other issue is money. i have a chronic autoimmune disease, and we wer very low income this year, without pet insurance (never again will i not have pet insurnace though ive heard theyre not alwaysgood at covering things.) we had spent $1900 on vet bill at least, hundreds more in transprtation, and bc we took her to the ER and not ASPCA (they are not open then), the bill for that night was almost $600. had we gotten x rays and surgeries, thousands and thousands more. but at the time, we were thinking of mostly....no mater how much we pay, if the likelihood is that she'll never walk again and be in pain, the decision was not about money, it was about her pain. the vet told me her large pupils probably meant she had been in pain.
i know it sounds like i'm looking for reassurance, but really, i want to learn so i can be a better parent in the future. i have never euthanized an animal before and when we went to the ER, we were not expecting to be faced with that decision - we thought we were going to splint her foot and try to nurse her not eating back to health... what haunts me is how much will she had, such a strong will...and the thought "could we have saved her? could her quality of life have ever returned? could she have ever eaten on her own again AND walked right and gotten the look in her eye back?"
so any thoughts/experience you have with strokes and blood clots etc. and if she had a fighting chance would be good to know for next time. i know this was a novel but i guess it is also cathartic to tell the story, but ...i'd like to know facts. in the end the vet said you made the right decision and i imediately thought 'she's saying that to make me feel better' bc she didnt suggest euthaniztion in the first place - but then i realized maybe she never suggested it bc i had said why i hadnt put her to sleep before so she assumed i wasn't willing. my husband and i had been spending a month and a half basically tending to her and not even working bc we were so worried, not sleeping, and we didnt know what was wrong. i learned a lot on this journey but want to learn more bc one day i'll probably get another cat and the more i know the better
my friend THINKS it's possible that when she had the cough months before, it was a sign of congenital heart failure, whic led to blood clots/stroke. she said heart disease is notoriously difficult to show up on tests.
total ramble - thoughts? should we have tried to keep her alive? should we have gotten the chest x ray or in the end we would have been led to euthanize anyway? sorry for total ramble. she' s only been gone a few days so we are processing a lot. xx <3 you guys have been amazing, amazing, amazing. and don't worry, if you tell me she had a fighting chance, i won't feel awful. we were going off of what the vet said in the moment, but it would be good to know for the future.
Mid September Coco stopped eating. We took her to the vet and they took bloodwork, gave her fluids and an enema (they said there was hard stool there) found out she had a UTI (only abnormal thing in bloodwork-my friend said creatinine was high, but vet said it's normal. ), gave her a broad spectrum antiobiotic, and sent her home because they thought she was too stressed there to eat. She came home, ate for about 2 days, then started sneezing (vet later said she probably developed herpes virus from vet stress) and stopped eating again. We gave her veraflox (an antibiotic they wanted us to give her) and mirataz to stimulate appetite. She continued to lick her lip (sign of nausea) and hardly ate. Vet said take her off antiobitics, maybe that's causing nausea, and here i learned maybe it was herpes virus blocking her sense of smell...that cleared up - nevertheles not eating.
*i neglected to mention to vet, I think, that months before, she had been coughing but stopped. not sure if relevant.
after she was not eating again, we took her Back to vet for an ultrasound and an enema. Ultrasound came out clear. Vet gave us Royal Canin fiber response, thinking maybe she had stopped eating bc she was constipated. We were ecstatic to see, when she came home, she was tryin gto open the bag on her own and eating like a freak. but days passed, and she didn't poop. back to vet for enema, and lactulose. vet says she's never seen a case like hers, where bloods and utrasound are clear but cat is not responding to appetite stimulants. i later was told they did an x ray too but never received a copy, but apparently it was all normal.
That enema didnt go well, there was poop in her carrier and we had to ask vet asst to clean her (they should have offered!) She also threw up in her carrier, perhaps from the smell. the Vet asst. cleaned her. She came home and refused to eat. Still licking lips.
Back to vet for cerenia anti nausea shot (which i learned her was sily, zofran would hve been better.) come home, doesnt eat. pepsid ac doesnt help.
learned tricks to try here, like fortiflora, bonito flakes, tuna, etc. nothing works. i find the only thing she will consume is whiskas cat milk & nutrical. she still grooms, doesnt hide, stil jumps around. she was always a very sedentary cat. i know living on cat milk and nutrical is not sustainable. we take her to humane society for 2nd opinion - they say same as other vet, never seen a case like hers before. they say they can do some explortory gastro something or other. someone else tells me NOT to do that, she has been to vets like 4-5 times in 2 weeks and sressed out, try to nurse her back to health.
cat obsessed friend tells me not to syringe. at a certain point i see she is getting really thin and i realize i MUST syringe, and learn a lot here. the day after we syringe for the first time, , at 6 am i hear a thud. she has collapsed, and her back legs have given out.
i pick her up and lay her down and she is having diffuculty breathing, i tell my husband she is dying. he says let's syringe her water and food - i think she will not swallow and am afraid we will hurt her, he said let's try and prop her up. we prop her up, she laps up water and food from the syringe. at this point, i imagine this collapsing has happened bc she hadnt been getting enough calories. miraculously, her legs are wobbly but immediately after quick syringing she is jumping off bed. by the way, after this episode her pupils were huge and part of her eyes turned blue.
we syringing her the next day or two, she even started eating food syringed onto the table, it was a breakthrough. i did notice her dragging her hind legs a little when she was coming out of litter box. anyway, after she ate a little food off the table, we thought she had made it through the weeds, or there was hope. and she jumps off table, she has had enough. then i look and see her paw is completely messed up. for me, straight from hope to panic. i said my god, she broke her paw. i call 2 vets and they say they cant help, they dont hvae x ray machine, it's too late at nightt, we have to take her to ER. coco is staring at me with huge pupils and flopping around the room, she canot even find a comfortable way to sit. we immediately decide to take her to ER bc she looks so uncomfortable.
coco is very vocal in the uber on way to ER, lots of meowing.
ER vet tells me - she didn't break her foot. this is a blood clot. and the other morning when i thought she was dying, that may have been a stroke. also at the er, she was - i'm not sure if panicked or having some sort of episode, bc she was breathing so heavily. that haunts me. i shoudl have asked why she was breathing that way.
when i was laying down the timeline for the vet, i made the stupid mistake of saying 'we never put her to sleep bc she has such a strong will to live. she's not hiding, she's grooming, she's still spunky.. (although, i negelcted to mention, since the what we know think was a stroke, she was way more sedentary and her eyes were messed up - but she was still trying to jump off furntiure.) so perhaps because i said that, the vet didn't offer euthanasia as an option. THIS vet said her creatinine was on the high end. she said we can do a chest x ray, and that she thinks it might be a heart condition, fluid in the lungs, or cancer. and we were about to do the chest x ray when i realized - what is the outcome of treatment, anyway, for each of 3 conditions? and will any of those conditions helps solve the mustery of why she has been not eating? she said maybe fluid in the lungs would cause nausea. i said, "will she ever walk again?" she said it's not very likely, and she might be in pain. she also thought it was very very suprising that coco's back legs had recovered so quickly, and i had forgotten to mention that i did spot her dragging her hind legs out of liter box, but other than that she was walking fine before the paw blood clot.
now, if i had known from the beginning that this mght be a stroke/blood clot scenario (and not a foot break), which i had neevr heard of, i would have posted here or obsessively researched before going forward. but my husband and i just took the vet at her word, looked at each other and said she seems to only be getting worse, we didn't want to put coco through the suffering, we didnt even know if she'd ever eat on her own again or be able to walk, and we decided to euthanize our baby.
when they took her in the room, her eyes were wild, she was having troube breathing, and i didn tknow if it was panic or sickness. i couldnt even pet her, she was trying to escape out of the room and trying to jump off couch, i caught her bc i was afraid her catheter would fall off. this is what haunts me-- her spirit had that strong will. she wanted out of that room. my husband, who is so loving, put his hand on her pretty gently, that stilled her, and i pet her constantly as they injected the propofol, and then euthanized her.
of course now that she's gone, we miss her so much, and wonder if we did the right thing. what were the chances we could have saved her? what were the chances she could have gotten feeling back in her hind legs and paw? how much pain would she have lived with?
the other issue is money. i have a chronic autoimmune disease, and we wer very low income this year, without pet insurance (never again will i not have pet insurnace though ive heard theyre not alwaysgood at covering things.) we had spent $1900 on vet bill at least, hundreds more in transprtation, and bc we took her to the ER and not ASPCA (they are not open then), the bill for that night was almost $600. had we gotten x rays and surgeries, thousands and thousands more. but at the time, we were thinking of mostly....no mater how much we pay, if the likelihood is that she'll never walk again and be in pain, the decision was not about money, it was about her pain. the vet told me her large pupils probably meant she had been in pain.
i know it sounds like i'm looking for reassurance, but really, i want to learn so i can be a better parent in the future. i have never euthanized an animal before and when we went to the ER, we were not expecting to be faced with that decision - we thought we were going to splint her foot and try to nurse her not eating back to health... what haunts me is how much will she had, such a strong will...and the thought "could we have saved her? could her quality of life have ever returned? could she have ever eaten on her own again AND walked right and gotten the look in her eye back?"
so any thoughts/experience you have with strokes and blood clots etc. and if she had a fighting chance would be good to know for next time. i know this was a novel but i guess it is also cathartic to tell the story, but ...i'd like to know facts. in the end the vet said you made the right decision and i imediately thought 'she's saying that to make me feel better' bc she didnt suggest euthaniztion in the first place - but then i realized maybe she never suggested it bc i had said why i hadnt put her to sleep before so she assumed i wasn't willing. my husband and i had been spending a month and a half basically tending to her and not even working bc we were so worried, not sleeping, and we didnt know what was wrong. i learned a lot on this journey but want to learn more bc one day i'll probably get another cat and the more i know the better
my friend THINKS it's possible that when she had the cough months before, it was a sign of congenital heart failure, whic led to blood clots/stroke. she said heart disease is notoriously difficult to show up on tests.
total ramble - thoughts? should we have tried to keep her alive? should we have gotten the chest x ray or in the end we would have been led to euthanize anyway? sorry for total ramble. she' s only been gone a few days so we are processing a lot. xx <3 you guys have been amazing, amazing, amazing. and don't worry, if you tell me she had a fighting chance, i won't feel awful. we were going off of what the vet said in the moment, but it would be good to know for the future.
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