I'm sorry this is going to be really long, but I would really appreciate any advice:
My 4 year old cat Lola has been through a horrible three weeks. She was originally admitted to the 24 hour vet with a temperature of 107.7. With the inexperience of a first time pet owner I sadly did not realize her temperature was so high and was just concerned about her acting lethargic and not coming to her afternoon feeding. After taking her to the vet I was shocked to find out how dangerously close to death she actually was. They oringinally thought it was a viral infection and she stayed at the vet for several days. While at the vet her face started swelling and her ears turned red and blistered.
As soon as I had brought her into the 24 hour vet I kept mentioning that she had been acting rather distant for the past two weeks. She had just gone to get her annual vaccination and her regular vet gave me Tresaderm drops to give her to treat a minor ear infection. I thought she was only acting distant because she hated me giving her the ear drops, but with this fever I now wondered if it was all conected. They decided to try Benadryl in case she was having a reaction to the drops and she instantly started improving. They sent her home with me a day later. I was to continue with her medications and wash her ears twice a day with mild anti-bacterial soap. I called my own vet as well as the 24 hour vet to get a reccomendation on the type of soap. Everyone seemed to think Dial would be fine.
When she returned home her fever would spike up every other day and her ears got worse. Large amounts of skin was falling off and they were oozing puss. I took her to another vet for a second opinion and they originally agreed it was allergies and said the skin falling off was normal. Eventually More skin fell off and she got a white stripe on her nose. I was then told to take her to a specialist because they now feared an auto-immune disease was causing this. The specialist found small mouth sores as well as the skin issues and decided to do a biopsy on her ears. The day before the biopsy they told me not to clean her ears in order to prevent the soap from confusing the results. Well the morning of the biopsy her ears suddenly looked ten times better. They were still scabbed, but the scabs were dry and less irritated looking. While I waited a week for the biopsy results I had a gut feeling not to use the soap anymore and I began to just rinse her ears with water. While doing this her ears continued to improve. However, while her ears improved her mouth sores got a lot bigger.
The biopsy results came in today and they have me completely confused. The results show that she is suffering from allergies. They are still just saying that it was from the Tresaderm. I personally think it was orginally from the Tresaderm and then she was also allergic to the dial soap. I mentioned this to the specialist and they told me that it would be wise to continue to avoid the soap. I'm just really stumped by the mouth sores. Would the allergies or the stress of the allergies have caused the mouth sores? Has anyone ever had this happen? Could she be allergic to her food as well? I can't find anything on allergies and mouth sores. Part of me is also worried because they had her on metacam to bring her fever down for about six different occasions and now I'm finding bad things about metacam and cats suffering kidney damage from it on the web.
I think I'm losing my mind because in my head I already have a scenario worked out where she was allergic to the Tresaderm and then proceeded to be allergic to the dial soap. Then the metacam injured her kidney's and now that is causing the sores in her mouth. I told my vet this and she thinks I'm looney and has assured me that 6 doses of metacam wouldn't cause kidney damage and that mouth sores can come from lots of things besides kidney damage.
As of right now they just want me to rinse her ears with water and give her a mouth rinse called rincinol to treat her mouth sores. She is going to continue on an antihistamine as her only other medication. They all think she should be on the road to recovery, but I have been through this twice before in the last three weeks and I'm scared to trust anymore vets.
If you have made it all the way through this babbling mess, please let me know what you think. Can the mouth sores be caused by allergies? Should I worry about food allergies in addition to the soap and Tresaderm? Do you think her kidneys could have been damaged by Metacam and it is causing the mouth sores? Any ideas about any of this?
Also, I should mention that besides the sores she seems to be making improvements. After a week of syringe feeding her she is now eating on her own and walking around a bit more. She is annoyed and trapped in an e-colar to protect her from scratching off her itchy ears, but overall she seems to be looking a little better everyday.
My 4 year old cat Lola has been through a horrible three weeks. She was originally admitted to the 24 hour vet with a temperature of 107.7. With the inexperience of a first time pet owner I sadly did not realize her temperature was so high and was just concerned about her acting lethargic and not coming to her afternoon feeding. After taking her to the vet I was shocked to find out how dangerously close to death she actually was. They oringinally thought it was a viral infection and she stayed at the vet for several days. While at the vet her face started swelling and her ears turned red and blistered.
As soon as I had brought her into the 24 hour vet I kept mentioning that she had been acting rather distant for the past two weeks. She had just gone to get her annual vaccination and her regular vet gave me Tresaderm drops to give her to treat a minor ear infection. I thought she was only acting distant because she hated me giving her the ear drops, but with this fever I now wondered if it was all conected. They decided to try Benadryl in case she was having a reaction to the drops and she instantly started improving. They sent her home with me a day later. I was to continue with her medications and wash her ears twice a day with mild anti-bacterial soap. I called my own vet as well as the 24 hour vet to get a reccomendation on the type of soap. Everyone seemed to think Dial would be fine.
When she returned home her fever would spike up every other day and her ears got worse. Large amounts of skin was falling off and they were oozing puss. I took her to another vet for a second opinion and they originally agreed it was allergies and said the skin falling off was normal. Eventually More skin fell off and she got a white stripe on her nose. I was then told to take her to a specialist because they now feared an auto-immune disease was causing this. The specialist found small mouth sores as well as the skin issues and decided to do a biopsy on her ears. The day before the biopsy they told me not to clean her ears in order to prevent the soap from confusing the results. Well the morning of the biopsy her ears suddenly looked ten times better. They were still scabbed, but the scabs were dry and less irritated looking. While I waited a week for the biopsy results I had a gut feeling not to use the soap anymore and I began to just rinse her ears with water. While doing this her ears continued to improve. However, while her ears improved her mouth sores got a lot bigger.
The biopsy results came in today and they have me completely confused. The results show that she is suffering from allergies. They are still just saying that it was from the Tresaderm. I personally think it was orginally from the Tresaderm and then she was also allergic to the dial soap. I mentioned this to the specialist and they told me that it would be wise to continue to avoid the soap. I'm just really stumped by the mouth sores. Would the allergies or the stress of the allergies have caused the mouth sores? Has anyone ever had this happen? Could she be allergic to her food as well? I can't find anything on allergies and mouth sores. Part of me is also worried because they had her on metacam to bring her fever down for about six different occasions and now I'm finding bad things about metacam and cats suffering kidney damage from it on the web.
I think I'm losing my mind because in my head I already have a scenario worked out where she was allergic to the Tresaderm and then proceeded to be allergic to the dial soap. Then the metacam injured her kidney's and now that is causing the sores in her mouth. I told my vet this and she thinks I'm looney and has assured me that 6 doses of metacam wouldn't cause kidney damage and that mouth sores can come from lots of things besides kidney damage.
As of right now they just want me to rinse her ears with water and give her a mouth rinse called rincinol to treat her mouth sores. She is going to continue on an antihistamine as her only other medication. They all think she should be on the road to recovery, but I have been through this twice before in the last three weeks and I'm scared to trust anymore vets.
If you have made it all the way through this babbling mess, please let me know what you think. Can the mouth sores be caused by allergies? Should I worry about food allergies in addition to the soap and Tresaderm? Do you think her kidneys could have been damaged by Metacam and it is causing the mouth sores? Any ideas about any of this?
Also, I should mention that besides the sores she seems to be making improvements. After a week of syringe feeding her she is now eating on her own and walking around a bit more. She is annoyed and trapped in an e-colar to protect her from scratching off her itchy ears, but overall she seems to be looking a little better everyday.
