Tuesday, November 27, 2007 , early morning

Our sick little Bunny

I mentioned in my entry yesterday that we’ve got an upper respiratory virus running through the house.  Some cats are worse that others—some have outright “kitty colds”, yet others have no symptoms at all.  On Sunday night we noticed Bunny was breathing a bit heavily, and I attributed that to the URI and perhaps some congestion.  By early Monday she was really breathing heavily, was moving very little, and couldn’t do normal physical tasks like jump a baby gate.  We took her to the vet as an emergency visit first thing in the morning, and she was initially diagnosed with either asthma or pneumonia.  Then the vet did an x-ray, and told us that Bunny had congestion in her lungs and in her airways, indicative of both asthma and pneumonia.  She also had a very enlarged, “Valentine-shaped” heart, which no one expected.  The vet said that could be indicative of “an extremely rare condition called Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy”, but told us not to be concerned about it because for now, asthma was still the likeliest culprit.

By the end of the day, Bunny had been treated with a bronchodilator, cortisone, some antibiotics, and Lasix, and was doing much better.  We brought her home with prednisone, Baytril, and Theophylline, with instructions to bring her back in later in the week to have an echocardiogram.  The echocardiogram would say more about the enlarged heart issue.

Sadly (and there’s not a powerful enough way for me to word that), I do think Bunny has all the signs of Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy, and I think the vet knows it too.  The vet even gave us her email address so we could update her on her days off about Bunny’s condition.  In my mind, Bunny’s episode yesterday was just like congestive heart failure.  Enlarged heart, fluid build-up in the lungs, difficulty breathing, lethargy, etc.  Even today, when she’s “better”, Bunny is still sitting rigidly upright or laying down in a “sphinx” position, and both are ways for cats with lung fluid to keep their airways open.  The other odd thing about her is that a couple of months ago, she just stopped growing.  We were looking at it from the opposite perspective—we thought Carlo was a gargantuan monster—but in reality, Bunny just doesn’t grow at all.  That would also be a sign of a body where circulation, oxygenation, etc., were poor.  One thing that can “set off” HCM in a genetically-predisposed cat is anesthesia (specifically ketamine)… did Bunny’s spay set off a chain of terrible events?  I guess we won’t know anything until she has an echocardiogram.

HCM is a really bad thing.  If a perfectly healthy cat is diagnosed with an enlarged heart incidentally, like during an x-ray for an injury, everything I’ve read says that the cat can live “many more years” with preventative treatment.  When a cat is diagnosed with HCM because they’re symptomatic, the prognosis seems to be along the lines of “months”, or “up to one year”.  And the year is filled with diuretics, beta blockers, and the omnipresent risk of sudden death. 

I know that having a lot of pets means we’ll see a lot of death.  I didn’t expect to have to encounter the possibility in one of my eight month old babies.  We kept Bunny and Carol because we thought Carlo was the frail one with his digestive problems, but it may turn out that Bunny is the genetic minefield.  If she has HCM and it’s genetic, then we’ll need to check Carlo for it, too.  I know I’m jumping the gun a bit because Bunny hasn’t had a formal diagnosis, but I’m not stupid.  The thought of losing her and having a prognosis written in “months” is just killing me.  I love them both so much.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 11/27 at 07:19 AM
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