Erik update

My vet called this morning with the results from Erik's blood tests. His white-cell count is high (and his temperature was higher than usual but not quite a fever Monday), so I'm to start giving him antibiotics now instead of next week when they'd be due (for the hepatitis). His thyroid number is also, for the first time, unusually high.

Back when he first started losing weight (a few years ago), the vet suspected hyper-thyroidism as the cause. We did bunches of tests and that number was always normal, so after eliminating other possible explanations (some scary), she shrugged and said "idiopathic". Now, suddenly, it's high. Huh? (She has no idea why.) One bit of good news, though: arrhythmia is sometimes a symptom of hyper-thyroidism, so with luck he doesn't really have heart disease.

There are three ways to treat hyper-thyroidism, she said. ( Read more... )

These are my notes from our phone conversation; I haven't yet consulted Doctor Google for more background.