A new diagnosis for Vonnegut

Hello all,

Ive been on a bit of a posting hiatus as Vonnegut has been having a great deal more issues. Some (if not all of this) will be x-posted to the Cushing's/IAA/Acromegaly forum.

Here is a little background if you aren't familiar with Vonn and our journey. In 2010/11 he started getting a poor hair coat and losing hair. The vets said flea allergy so they wanted me to increase his frequency on flea control. Didn't help. So they said skin fungus and we did medicated baths a couple of times a week for a couple of months. Didn't help. I backed off because my vet at the time had no answers. Fast forward to 2015/16. Vonn dropped half his body weight (20 pounds down to 10) and I started to push HARD to get answers. The vet I was using did bloodwork and his muscle enzymes came back high. They worried about his heart so we did x-ray and ultrasound with totally normal results.

At this point, I changed vets. I needed answers so I needed a vet who would keep digging and who had better diagnostics. We came back with a diagnosis of diabetes. He was placed on a trial for an oral medication then moved over to PZI. It took awhile and we finally settled at 4.5 units twice a day. During this time he was also diagnosed with chronic pancreatitis and was started on Pnacrezyme twice a day. He started acting off so I came to the message boards, started testing his sugar again, and discovered he was dropping low. Cue juggling insulin again and actually stopping it. Then he was not right again. This cat eats EVERYTHING and he stopped eating. His sugar was pushing 400 so we started insulin again. Then he started having black stools with a great deal of fresh blood so he went back to the vet. Vet thought she felt a mass so she wanted to do x-rays. She said to me on the phone that he looks like a Cushing's cat, but he can't be because it's so rare. X-ray revealed calcification above his adrenal glands. He's Cushinoid. We will be doing a dex suppression test to confirm and starting him on meds ASAP.

This has been going on for a long time,undiagnosed. I have an excellent team of vets now and they are really doing their research to help Vonn and me out. I can read the studies and educate myself, but I would really appreciate some real life experiences. Who else has a Cushing's kitty? What is life like for them? Can getting the Cushing's managed clear up the diabetes? What kind of life expectancy am I looking at with him? Do I need to change his food due to this disease process? Any and all information will be wonderful.

Thank you all so much in advance,
Caroline and Vonnegut

 

Hi Caroline! Glad to hear from you and Vonn. I'm sorry to hear about his diagnosis, but having answers is good. I don't have any actual experience with Cushings...and I don't think that forum gets much traffic. You might try posting in Health with a subject that mentions Recent Cushings Diagnosis...Experience. or something like that. And maybe a question mark to get more eyes? Sorry I don't have more to offer but I don't know much about it!

 

@Rachel I have actually gotten some great info in the Cushing's thread! Not many replies but the ones I've gotten were great. I'll try in health and see what happens. Thanks!