This is Coco. His story to follow!
Ironic it is, that when you need help, financial of otherwise, your crisis has you so focused, stressed, and preoccupied that you can no more ask for it than you can fly.
Every case, every emergency, is different: the medical mysteries are the most fraught. Along with more garden variety ailments, I've had a new cat, plucked from the streets after showing up at one of my colonies. He baffled the experts, and was sent home to die...twice, by allopathic-only doctors.
Good thing about being stubborn, you don't give up. Experience tells us that there's always more to know, to do. And yet I waited to get the ultrasound which gave us the last piece of the puzzle for Coco...that his liver was bleeding, from its entire surface! I should have known better than to wait. The vet had said that if there were masses, and we wanted to do chemotherapy, there was no reason to get the ultrasound...and we would not have elected to do chemo.
To back up, Coco had been in a good foster home, very close to me, and had been doing well for three weeks. Then one morning the foster called, saying that he was vomiting and breathing fast. ER at once.
Bloodwork showed that he was extremely anemic, and he got a transfusion. His hematocrit (% of red cells in blood) was too low to sustain life. It bounced back to 20% after the transfusion (25-45% most say is normal) and held at 19%. We crossed fingers and took him home. He did fine...!! However, the cause of the anemia was still unknown. He did carry the feline Immunodeficiency virus but the vets said that that alone should not have caused him to become so anemic. I've had plenty of FIV positive cats with no problems...
So it was wait and see...
There's a lot more to this story...Much more! Amazing and wonderful. But enough for today!
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