Mama has always had issues with vomiting, it was minor and nothing popped on his blood work when we got his teeth cleaned last year. The vomiting started to intensify and he was loosing weight so we took him to the vet. 0.5mg of Omeprazole and instead of running for the bedroom when we got home, he ran straight to the food bowl and returned 5 times within the hour. Later that night he started playing like a kitten out of nowhere (Mama is a 9 year old sexy grumpy cat not a playful kitten like cat). He hasn't vomited since. He also had a FORL which we dealt with/had the tooth extracted.
As part of the visit we got blood work done and it came back with low ALP levels (malnutrition) and high SDMA. This normally indicates kidney failure.
If that's what it is, we'll deal with it and give him the best we can, however, something is nagging at me. It's not the inability to accept that he might pass, something just seems off with the results and I can't put my finger on it. I trust my vet is interpreting the results as he's trained to and he's an excellent vet... yet here I am.
Where do you go to ask the questions your vet can't answer? Like what can influence SDMA tests? One thought keeps occurring to me: Wouldn't muscle tissue proteins breakdown and spike SDMA in the same way a kidney breaking down would? If a cat was starving himself to the point of muscle loss, there would be a flood of muscle proteins being passed through the system. Could that spike SDMA levels while leaving other kidney failure indicators well in the green?
He can't answer that type of question, it's too specific. The question is, who can?
Right now I feel like the decision is to blindly follow my vet or turn Mama into a test subject because I can't find the answers I need.
As part of the visit we got blood work done and it came back with low ALP levels (malnutrition) and high SDMA. This normally indicates kidney failure.
If that's what it is, we'll deal with it and give him the best we can, however, something is nagging at me. It's not the inability to accept that he might pass, something just seems off with the results and I can't put my finger on it. I trust my vet is interpreting the results as he's trained to and he's an excellent vet... yet here I am.
Where do you go to ask the questions your vet can't answer? Like what can influence SDMA tests? One thought keeps occurring to me: Wouldn't muscle tissue proteins breakdown and spike SDMA in the same way a kidney breaking down would? If a cat was starving himself to the point of muscle loss, there would be a flood of muscle proteins being passed through the system. Could that spike SDMA levels while leaving other kidney failure indicators well in the green?
He can't answer that type of question, it's too specific. The question is, who can?
Right now I feel like the decision is to blindly follow my vet or turn Mama into a test subject because I can't find the answers I need.
