9/26 Alice AMPS 151 PMPS 122 - still sick

https://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/threads/9-20-alice-yellow-day.235657/

No posts for about a week due to my own illness things. In the past week we have not had help for doing her fluids at the same time I was well enough to do them. Plan is to give maybe 50mL subq tomorrow. She has stopped chewing food. Basically her teeth sound scraping and awful anytime she chews now and I think they just be hurting her. So she is overdue for a dental but still ridiculously sick twelve million other ways. She’s really skinny. She has been borderline on even having the strength and ability to half jump onto the side of the bed and climb up with her front legs the way my CH cats do.
I am syringe feeding Koha beef now. (Their pate is the smoothest to syringe.) She almost will eat tiki venison pate or even the ziwi lamb, the Koha is currently associated with feeling sick, so she doesn’t want that even on her own. She’s very unhappy about syringe feeding.
She’s getting both ondansetron and Cerenia some days. She’s about done with the Clavamox, maybe one dose left in the bottle. Monday or Tuesday night she started peeing blood again and being in distress for a couple hours. Worried the infection is not going to be cleared and how much sicker she could become while we wait for her to be off the antibiotic for a few days so she can have a culture and sensitivity done.

I keep telling myself everything she has is treatable, but all of these problems together, maybe it’s too much. For her, but also for my own skills and abilities to treat her and get her through it, maybe.

When is a good time to resort to things like feeding tubes? Would this just make her miserable? Is it a losing situation here? I’d love after all this diabetes if on her last day I could give her nausea medicine then give her something she loves that she hasn’t had in a long time, like yogurt. (I used to let her lick tiny tiny bits. I don’t feed them human food!) I just feel like she looks so miserable. She shouldn’t have to be miserable. If I can fix it for awhile again maybe it’s worth it for her to survive through this infection plus everything else but if she can’t recover at least halfway....

Anyway ummm
She’s also down to a fat 0.5u from 0.75 due to her decreased appetite. I am not getting very many calories in via syringe feeds, and I suspect she may have bounced a couple of times earlier in the week when I was more medicated and less able to check in on her BGLs. She was still eating some by herself then. I’m not sure how to get a whole can in a day into her this way. I wish she could bite the food. Just eat.

Alright sorry this is not succinct, just trying to catch up. <3

 

I’m thinking this looks like maybe 40mL subq tonight? Nothing like giving your cat subcutaneous fluids at 2:30am on a Saturday night. When did I get to be so much fun? (I was pretty excited to have help available sooner than AM, actually.)

She’s so weak it’s hard for her to exert herself to climb onto my belly even when she and I are both already on the bed. It shouldn’t be like this. I keep trying to picture her as a roughly 74 year old lady with her same medical history. What would that person be thinking or feeling? Or wanting, needing?

She looks a bit rough, yeah? :\

 

I’ll ask this again on a newer thread tomorrow if needed, but...
what do you do for bubbles in the line when you give subq fluids? I know a little is okay, but how much before it is too much? I ridiculously tried to tap all these little bubbles to the top of the line then realized I can’t get rid of them that way because the line is clamped. I have not had my head on all the way this week.

ETA: weighed her, she’s down half a pound since her 8/31 vet visit when her kidney disease was diagnosed, that’s even after the fluids tonight

 

Cassandra I am so sorry to read all this, have you opened the line and let some fluids run in the sink to get the bubbles out of line? That’s what I would do.
I will say lots and lots of prayers for you and Alice

 

I don't have any advice. Just sending prayers for you and Alice.

 

Thank you both.

 

Tired. Her shot has ended up so late this month it’s not until 10:30 now. Her +8.8 is 51 so without her eating properly on her own I’m giving syrup in a moment. She will lick that.

I do think the fluids helped a bit. She seemed to fall into a more comfortable, deeper sleep for awhile and she made more of her chirpy noises that she seemed too tired or sick-feeling to make earlier.

Oh! And she just had a careful but functional landing from the bed to chair to floor. She’s been too weak to climb up on me to cuddle, so I am happy to see this. She is drinking lots of water now. Still, I am giving syrup and trying to get her to lick soupy food now. She might like it with something sugary added.

 

So I spilt a bit of corn syrup so she may have had a little more than a fair amount but it was in with the soupy food stuff so maybe she got a little something else decent, nutritionally, and I’m glad she got any calories in her tiny little body. I have been working on one 3oz can of Koha for 3-4 cycles now. She also willingly licked and nearly nibbled some ziwipeak lamb in the AM. I know she got the fats off the top of it. Anything is calories right now. And I can take a nap I think.

It would be a great time to stay up and get data on how the sugar affects her but I think she deserves a break from data collection these days, when it’s safe.