cat update

[cellio]

I took Erik in for the ultrasound this morning. This was what the vet recommended after the last set of blood tests still showed elevated liver enzymes without an obvious cause. I had not previously known that they did ultrasounds on cats. So Erik is now missing the fur on his belly; since he likes to sleep on the bedroom radiator I spread a thin towel on it to give him some substitute cushioning/insulation.

Watching the ultrasound was kind of interesting. The edges of the various organs weren't as obvious as I thought they would be, but the specialist was pointing out stuff to me as she went. The software they use for doing captures was written intelligently; there's a menu with standard parts ("liver", "gallbladder", "left kidney", etc), and after each snapshot the vet just selected one of these from the menu and dragged it onto the image. There was a line-drawing tool, too. So they can annotate the images as they go along rather than having to puzzle it all out later.

The good news is that there were no obvious tumors. There was some mineralization in his liver and kidneys; given his high calcium levels, that's not a surprise. (In fact, it was seeing a bit of this in an unrelated X-ray four years ago that prompted his first blood test.) There is "sludge" in his "billiary tree", but apparently that's not something to get too worked up over.

The specialist said the most probable diagnosis is "cholangio-hepatitis". I will need to spend some quality time with Google to further understand this. It is an inflamation, if I understand correctly, but not an infection. My vet (who was relaying all of this to me) said this actually comes in several flavors, and the only way to determine which one is to do a liver biopsy -- and that means surgery; they can't just take it via a needle.

Waitaminute, I said. Isn't surgery kind of risky, especially on older animals? She said yes, and she'd be hesitant to do the biopsy.

So, I said, there are several flavors with different treatments. Is this something where haste is of the utmost importance, or is it a slow-moving condition and we've got time to work? The latter. And, I said, what are the consequences of guessing wrong -- does an incorrect treatment do harm, or merely fail to do good? The latter, she said. Well then, I said, why don't we try your best guess first? She had apparently been thinking along similar lines, though I gather she was hesitant to suggest it for fear of the "you want to experiment on my pet?!" reaction. (There is also the cost factor, but when you compare the cost of ineffective drugs to the cost of surgery, I think the drugs still win on dollars.)

The treatment she described involves daily capsules of "ursodiol" (she didn't say for how long) and intermittent bursts of antibiotics. I'm not sure I understand the latter, but the problem readings did drop off after past courses of antibiotics so there must be something to it. (Except it's not an infection? I'm confused.)

She needs to check a couple things with the specialist before proceeding, so I probably won't be having adventures with pills and cats until after Thanksgiving.

Comments

[psu-jedi.livejournal.com]

{{{{kitty healing vibes}}}}} coming your way from Smokey and Zathras!

[cellio]

Thanks!