Strange blood cell count after hepatic lipidosis
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.
Stange blood cell count after hepatic lipidosis- update
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.