Strange blood cell count after hepatic lipidosis

**Catty1** · 10-30-2009, 11:28 PM

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** · 10-31-2009, 11:50 AM

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** · 10-31-2009, 03:38 PM

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** · 11-02-2009, 10:32 AM

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** · 11-02-2009, 10:50 AM

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** · 11-02-2009, 03:23 PM

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.