Specialist Vet

Richard Gowan is a wonderful man. He seems to know everything about CRF. He talks fast and clearly. But the news is very sad and I am so devastated. Richard looked at Milo and did an examination. Milo is an Abyssinian and they tend to get Amylydosis. If that is the case he will live only a couple of weeks most likely. and he says with Milo there is more than a good chance that he has this. He is in Acute Renal Failure, stage 3 or 4 of 4 stages. He said it was rapid, moving fast in Milo. And he is right. Milo's breathe was fine a week ago. I checked that because I knew of the breath thing, and only today it is suddenly really bad. Last night he slept with me and it was fine. Today it is so different. If it is not amylydosis it might be cancer or maybe something else. But either way he is in acute renal faiure and there is very little to be done. There is the renal transplant option but it is in another city 3 hours flight away, I'd have to take in the donor cat and I already have 5 pets and rent, it will be $10, 000 - $12000 and it would have to be done now, success has not been good, risks are high and the longest a cat has lived after it is only 3 years. Those factors are not ones I would go for.

Tomorrow Milo is going in for an ultrasound, and probably a small fine needle biopsy. That will tell us as much as possible as to be known, and Richard said it might not tell us much. He said SQ's (the fluids) should be started and the aluminium hydroxide phospherous binder is really good. He said ipakitine is popular but it does a general job. With Milo, no way go ipakitine, go aluminium hydroxide and possibly calcitriol. But he said don't worry about the calcitriol because with Milo it will make very little difference right now. He said not giving phospherous binders until the phospherous levels got high is not right. He explained you need to keep them low.

He talked about renal failure having so many potential causes. It was not a simple thing, very complex. And as anyone who has researched it knows, treatment and progress varies with each cat deopnding on age, severity, causes (which is often unknown) and the individual cat, plus genes too. A nice thing was that he was pretty impressed with the knowledge I had in such a short time. But I can not belive my baby will not make Christmas. I always had this feeling Milo would be with me for 20 years. I nicknamed him the Perfect Cat because he is gorgeous, wonderful, loved by cats, dogs, people...everything and he loves everything, he is affectionate, active, intelligent. I am so devastated. My little man is dying right before my eyes. I can not explain how that feels.