I got some devastating news yesterday about my 2 year old cat. He has polycystic kidney disease
. I think the saddest thing to me right now is that he always seemed to be our healthiest cat and now I find out that he's actually the sickest, and has been since birth
.
Last Friday he was acting lethargic so we took him to the emergency vet. She listened to his heart and said that even though its normal for cats to have a high heart rate when they are nervous, his heart rate was higher than "normal". She also heard a heart murmur, so his heart is what she focused her attention on. She x-rayed him and saw that his heart looked normal, but he was obviously constipated. So he got an enema. He had bloodwork done and everything came back normal, so after the enema she sent him home with instructions to bring him back to my regular vet for a follow up in a few days. We went on a short vacation this weekend and took him with us so we could monitor him at all times. The vet had showed us how to manually remove stool from him if he was having trouble going and thankfully my husband was willing to do that
. He was acting basically fine all weekend, although still obviously constipated. He'd cry at times, my husband would manually remove the hard stool and then he would act normal again. We got back home on Monday night, so yesterday (Tuesday) we took him to our vet for a checkup.
I think what is most shocking to me right now is that I took him in, telling the vet that he was still constipated, and I was just expecting another enema. I also expected him to recheck his heart based on the ER vets concerns. However, this vet looked at his xrays and agreed that his heart looked fine and after listening to it, said the same thing. He agreed that he definitely had a backup of stool in his intestines, but wasn't necessarily constipated. His kidneys caught his attention on the x-rays though. The ER vet noticed that something seemed off about them. She said that they were an odd shape but since his bloodwork came back normal she wasn't concerned. My regular vet took a closer look and ultrasounded his kidneys and discovered polycystic kidney disease.
I'm absolutely devastated right now. He isn't in renal failure yet and right now his kidneys seem to be working just fine. But the cysts are there and the vet showed them to me in the ultrasound. Usually I can't ever see anything pointed out to me in an ultrasound, but I could see this very clearly.
I searched the forums and found a lot of information about kidney disease and renal failure, but nothing specific about polycystic kidney disease. I know that it will eventually lead to renal failure and I'm having a really hard time dealing with that right now.
Meepers is our little baby. We trapped his feral mother and she gave birth to him (only him) about a week after we took her in. She tried to abandon him so he was half bottle fed and half nursed by her (she only nursed when we locked her in a small bathroom with him and she couldn't get away from him). My husband is so attached to him because he is the one who basically hand raised him. And now we find out that he's not even going to be able to live a normal lifespan. I've been crying for 2 days now.
So I guess I'm just wondering if anyone has dealt with this before. Has there been any way to delay the onset of renal failure? We just started him on a prescription food for kidney failure in an attempt to do just that but it seems like this is just going to be a ticking time bomb that we just have to wait for.
If anyone has any experience with this specifically, I'd be really interested to hear your story.
ETA: the vet said that he doesn't think he is constipated. He thinks that he has some hard stool backed up, but not at full constipation levels, but that it may be rubbing against his kidneys, causing him pain, which is causing him to just hold it all in. So he did give him some stool softener to hopefully ease his pain with that.
Last Friday he was acting lethargic so we took him to the emergency vet. She listened to his heart and said that even though its normal for cats to have a high heart rate when they are nervous, his heart rate was higher than "normal". She also heard a heart murmur, so his heart is what she focused her attention on. She x-rayed him and saw that his heart looked normal, but he was obviously constipated. So he got an enema. He had bloodwork done and everything came back normal, so after the enema she sent him home with instructions to bring him back to my regular vet for a follow up in a few days. We went on a short vacation this weekend and took him with us so we could monitor him at all times. The vet had showed us how to manually remove stool from him if he was having trouble going and thankfully my husband was willing to do that
I think what is most shocking to me right now is that I took him in, telling the vet that he was still constipated, and I was just expecting another enema. I also expected him to recheck his heart based on the ER vets concerns. However, this vet looked at his xrays and agreed that his heart looked fine and after listening to it, said the same thing. He agreed that he definitely had a backup of stool in his intestines, but wasn't necessarily constipated. His kidneys caught his attention on the x-rays though. The ER vet noticed that something seemed off about them. She said that they were an odd shape but since his bloodwork came back normal she wasn't concerned. My regular vet took a closer look and ultrasounded his kidneys and discovered polycystic kidney disease.
I'm absolutely devastated right now. He isn't in renal failure yet and right now his kidneys seem to be working just fine. But the cysts are there and the vet showed them to me in the ultrasound. Usually I can't ever see anything pointed out to me in an ultrasound, but I could see this very clearly.
I searched the forums and found a lot of information about kidney disease and renal failure, but nothing specific about polycystic kidney disease. I know that it will eventually lead to renal failure and I'm having a really hard time dealing with that right now.
Meepers is our little baby. We trapped his feral mother and she gave birth to him (only him) about a week after we took her in. She tried to abandon him so he was half bottle fed and half nursed by her (she only nursed when we locked her in a small bathroom with him and she couldn't get away from him). My husband is so attached to him because he is the one who basically hand raised him. And now we find out that he's not even going to be able to live a normal lifespan. I've been crying for 2 days now.
So I guess I'm just wondering if anyone has dealt with this before. Has there been any way to delay the onset of renal failure? We just started him on a prescription food for kidney failure in an attempt to do just that but it seems like this is just going to be a ticking time bomb that we just have to wait for.
If anyone has any experience with this specifically, I'd be really interested to hear your story.
ETA: the vet said that he doesn't think he is constipated. He thinks that he has some hard stool backed up, but not at full constipation levels, but that it may be rubbing against his kidneys, causing him pain, which is causing him to just hold it all in. So he did give him some stool softener to hopefully ease his pain with that.
