Strange blood cell count after hepatic lipidosis

[learningmom]

Hi,
I'm new to this forum and hoping someone has had experience with this situation.
My cat stopped eating when I changed her brand of food. She lost weight. After a trip to the vet she was diagnosed with hepatic lipidosis but they could find nothing else wrong with her. We put in a feeding tube and I've been feeding her for about 4 weeks now. She has had alot of improvement. She's much more alert and starting to eat on her own and play again.
She is still fairly lethargic although she was always a quiet cat. She is only 2 and has tested negative for FLV with the ELSIA test. We also have her mother, father and the whole rest of her litter. No one else is sick.
I took her back to the vet for blood work. Her liver has dramatically improved and the vet said the hepatic lipidosis has cleared up however now her WBC is high and her RBC is low. I don't remember the exact numbers. They think that it might be an infection or a problem with her bone marrow.
In the mean time she has become congested. I can hear it when she breathes and she coughs once in awhile. I'm calling the vet today but I was wondering if anyone has had anything similar happen.

[Karen]

Oh, goodness, how worrying!

Is she indoor only, or indoor, outdoor?

She'll be in our prayers in the meantime, that the vets can find and fix whatever is causing this.

[learningmom]

She is an indoor cat only. Her father will escape on us from time to time but he stays in our yard and is only out for about 15 min and is supervised when he gets out until we catch him again.
I just called the vet but she is in surgery right now and I'm waiting for a call back. It's just so frustrating considering that she seems to be improving and the hepatic lipidosis has resolved and now there is another problem. I'm wondering if it could be an URI since she is congested or maybe pneumonia from something related to the feeding tube. She has an E-tube.

I've attached a picture of my kitty her name is Crybaby.

[Catty1]

Crybaby is just beautiful!

I hope the vet has answers. It MAY be just that she picked up a bit of an infection while her immune system was out of whack with the lipidosis.

There is an antibiotic called Convenia (sp?) that can be given as an injection - one lasts for 2 weeks. That might be a thought.

Please keep us posted!

ETA: Maybe ask your vet about a slight infection from the feeding tube. I hope your little girl is eating on her own again soon!

[Anikaca77]

I'm sorry I don't have any info for Crybaby but she's very cute. Poor girl. I hope she heals up soon. She's so young.

Prays & Welcome to this group,
Melissa

[learningmom]

Finally talked to the vet tonight. I'm taking Crybaby in tomorrow to have her blood cell counted again. 3 days ago they were :RBC 14 and WBC 32,000.
When I first took her to the vet when she was diagnosed with hepatic lipidosis both her WBC and RBC were perfectly normal.
So tonight the vet thinks that this maybe a secondary problem from the lipidosis. She said sometimes the white blood cells will respond to an infection and go wild and start attacking the body's own red blood cells. Also there is a possibility that she has the herpes virus ( her sister does) and the stress from the lipidosis has caused a URI and this is cause the irregular blood cell count. Of course it could still be something more serious with the bone marrow.
Anyway I'll let you all know how the numbers are tomorrow. The vet thought she could make a better diagnosis once she sees a few test results over time to see what direction the numbers are going in.

I am so grateful that I live near an animal emergency hospital. My vet is part of the hospital so they are very experienced. Thank you for your prayers and thoughts. They are truly appreciated.

[Karen]

You're welcome, and we'll keep her in our prayers. Good luck tomorrow, baby!

[learningmom]

hi Everyone,
I brought Crybaby back to the vets today for blood work. She's been on an antibiotic for 3 days now. Neither the vet nor I had a lot of hope for the blood work today. Well I just got a call from the vet, the blood work came back. Her WBC and RBC are both back within normal range. Yippie!!!! I was starting to expect the worst so I can't tell you what a relief this was. Her RBC is 29.7 and she said the low end of normal on their machine is 29.0 so she is still a little on the low side but far better then the 14 she was at.
Plus she gained 0.2lbs. She still has a lot of weight to gain and needs to rebuild her strength and needs to eat enough on her own so we can remove the feeding tube but things are certainly looking up.
Thanks again for your thoughts and prayers.

I also wanted to mention that this was the second vet I brought her to. The first vet was a local vet and when he ran her blood work it all pointed to something with the liver. All her numbers were way off and she wasn't eating. He gave me some medicine to give her. I had been trying to feed her with a syringe but she was really fighting me about it and I wasn't getting anything into her. I brought her home and the next day she seemed worse. I researched a lot myself and found hepatic lipidosis. It sounded exactly like what she had. I brought her back the next day and asked him if it could be that and he said," Oh no! it's definitely not hepatic lipidosis." I had read that a feeding tube is helpful with cats like Crybaby so I asked him if we could put one in since I couldn't get any food into her and it had already been a week since she had eaten on her own. He told me,"No, I only do that with cats that are fatal to give them a little more time" He also said that he had only done the procedure once before and he would have to refer me to someone if he felt that she had gotten to that point. So he gave me an appetite stimulant. We gave her one in the office and waited. She licked her food once and then backed away from it like it was poison. He said she would be fine and that she would probably eat once she got home in her own surroundings. He said not to worry because cats can go a couple of weeks with out eating and that she would eat when she got hungry. ( I kind of thought after a week of not eating she would already be hungry)

I brought her home. In the next two hours she went downhill fast. She loves to jump on my counters then to the top of my cabinets in the kitchen. She tried to jump on the counter and couldn't make it at all and fell back to the floor in a heap. My gut told me this was not the right course of action so I called the emergency hospital and the vet office associated with it and told them I wanted a second opinion.
I brought her in that afternoon. She was barely moving at all. I had all her previous blood worked faxed to the new vet. She immediately diagnosed her with hepatic lipidosis ( funny the other vet said it couldn't be that) I told them I was mostly concerned with the fact that she wasn't eating and everything I had read about hepatic lipidosis said it was very important to get the food into them in order to help the liver restore itself. I told her what the other vet had said about only giving fatal cats a feeding tube. She said,"She will be fatal if we don't give her a feeding tube". It was late and I thought they would want to do it the next day but she said we needed to do it right now. So 1 feeding tube and a few blood tests and many phone calls later I have a cat that seems to be on the mend.
I just keep thinking that if I hadn't trusted my gut and taken her for a second opinion that my Crybaby would have been dead weeks ago.

I'm telling this long story to tell anyone else out there that has a sick pet to trust your instincts if you think your pet isn't getting the right care. Research their symptoms or initial diagnosis and find out all you can. That's the only way I found out about a feeding tube which probably saved Crybaby's life. The information you learn will help you know what questions to ask and what kind of care your pet should be getting. It might just save their life, I think it did in our case.
So unless something changes with Crybaby we don't have to go back to the vet for two weeks! My pocketbook will appreciate that. Especially since the next test we were going to have to do were a ultrasound and a bone marrow biopsy. That was going to be about 750.00, plus I really didn't want to put her through all that. I already had to bring her back twice because she ripped out the stitches that hold the feeding tube in place.

So please keep Crybaby in your thoughts and prayers that she continues her recovery. Thanks again. I will update you as to her progress. This is a great forum, I'm so glad I found it.

[Catty1]

AMEN to trusting your gut! Bless you for insisting on that second opinion. I hope that first vet can get Crybaby's diagnosis faxed over PRONTO - or delivered with a smack upside the head!

How great that she can be off the feeding tube and gain a little more weight too!

Welcome to the forum. We love pics! Feel free to post your fur family in Cat General!

[learningmom]

Thanks,
Actually the first vet called the second vet requesting what their diagnosis was. The second vet called me to ask my permission to send her records over because they knew that I had had an issue with the first vet and didn't plan on going back to them. I told them to send the records and my thought was that maybe the first vet will learn something about hepatic lipidosis and maybe if another cat shows up at his office he might treat it differently.
We have 10 cats in our fur family.
Momar, Marmalade, Rufus, Moneypenny, Jack, Precious, Oscarette, Rufucina, Crybaby and Peanut. I'll post picture in the cat general catagory later today.

[krazyaboutkatz]

Welcome to PT. I'm so sorry to hear about Crybaby but I'm glad that she's now on the mend. I've been through 2 cats not eating before and I know that you can't wait too long before it effects their liver. I'm so glad that you got a second opinion. I hope that she'll recover quickly. I'll keep her in my thoughts and prayers. I look forward to seeing and hearing about all of your cats in the future. Take care.

[learningmom]

I just wanted to let you all know that Crybaby has really perked up over the last 24 hours. She's been rubbing in between our legs and jumping on the counters again. (I never thought I'd be happy to have a cat jump on my counters). Everyday she's eating more and more on her own and I can feel her getting heavier. She's up and about and socializing with the other cats again. She had been hiding from them before.
She is scratching like mad at the bandage around her neck that keeps the feeding tube in. She does it a lot. She's already pulled out some fur on one side of her neck and I think a couple of the stitches for the feeding tube are out again too. If she pulls all the stitches out again I think they will just remove the tube. I hope she will keep it in for a least another week so I can get her antibiotics into her easily. She'll be done with those on Friday.
I don't know what to do about the scratching. I hate seeing her pull her fur out like that. I tried putting the e-collar on her that the vet gave me but she really doesn't like it. She flails her head around and keeps walking backwards and falls over. Plus she can still get to the bandage from behind the collar. I take the bandages off a couple times a day and let her neck breath and I give her neck scratches. I can't leave it off for long though because she'll be able to scratch the feeding tube right out so I have to stay with her.

[Karen]

I'm glad she's feeling better - hey have you considered putting Soft Paws over her claws so she cannot scratch at the wound as easily? Might be worth trying!

[Lizzie]

Congratulations on pulling Crybaby through this very serious problem, she really owes her life to you. I almost couldn't believe what the first vet told you, not only about not considering hepatic lipidosis to be a possibility when it would be the first thing most vets would consider, but also about putting in a tube when a cat is terminally ill. What a lousy thing to do to a cat in their last weeks of life, pushing them to live a tiny bit longer when their body is telling them it's time to leave. The only experience I could compare it to was when a substitute vet told me that my recently rescued cat Be^te had a brain tumor because he was circling and tilting his head. In fact, he had ear mites!

You obviously change the dressing yourself since you mentioned removing it so you could give the area a good scratch - boy do they love that when they have a bandage on most of the time, drooling and purring madly while you scrath. My Diego has had a tube in (well, several tubes, one after the other) for about 18 months now so I can give him pain medication for nerve pain in his mouth. He's a big, strong boy and beats the heck out of the bandage so I've gradually developed my best way to protect the tube insertion site. I wrap the gamgee twice around the tube site, cutting a hole just large enough for the tube to go through on the first wrap and then cutting into the gamgee so it wraps either side of the tube on the second. I then use cloth tape across the gamgee all across where he is most likely to scratch close to the tube. I think this helps stop his claws going through both the vetwrap and the gamgee then right to the stitches. The vet wrap also has holes cut into it so I can slip the tube through and it's wrapped so the third short wrap is around the tube site.

Anyway, it sounds like you will both be free of the tube in a few days. Let us know how she enjoys her freedom and renewed health.