today I learned (veterinary edition)

[cellio]

Orlando saw an ophthalmologist today because his pupils barely contract and my vet wanted a consultation. He's been somewhat like that since I adopted him six years ago (I've never seen pupil slits), but it's become more pronounced recently. Google had told me that this can be an age thing and it can indicate hypertension. We checked his blood pressure recently to evaluate the latter and got ambiguous results; my vet also says that measuring feline blood pressure is kind of dicey. (They took three readings in one visit, and one of them was not like the other two.)

Things I learned today:

• Orlando is almost certainly older than we thought he was. We thought 10ish and are now bumping that up to 12ish.

• Iris atrophy is a thing that happens in older cats where the relevant muscles just don't work as well any more. I wonder if that happens in humans too -- never heard of it before. (The ophthalmologist didn't find anything else wrong, though didn't rule out hypertension and suggested rechecking blood pressure, so this is the working theory. His optic nerve and retinas look fine.)

• They use the same numbing drops on cats that they do on people, complete with orange dye -- which apparently makes (something) easier to see, but I've failed to retain what the (something) is.

• Orlando's ocular pressure is the same as mine was at my ophthalmologist visit on Friday. But mine's the result of glaucoma drugs and his comes naturally. So, no worries there.

• He has a tiny cataract forming in one eye -- something to check back on later, but nothing to do now. I giggled at the mental image of Orlando wearing glasses.

Comments

[minoanmiss]

*reads and learns*

[magid]

Tiny cataracts has me thinking "scale model of the Nile" :-)

(I didn't even know there were animal-specialized opthamologists. I live and learn.)

[eub]

FWIW the orange dye sounds like fluorescein, which is used in humans to highlight foreign bodies and visualize damage to the cornea / sclera / conjunctiva. Not sure why they'd be using it specifically for examining iris behavior, or if it was just in the *caine drops formulation already.