Samantha needs some good vibes :-(

Tomorrow I'm taking my 11 month old kitten to the cardiologist to have her heart checked out and I'm a nervous wreck. At her last vet appointment the vet heard a grade 3/4 heart murmur . She was FREAKING out though, so i'm hopeful that that is what caused it to sound as bad as it did, but at the same time I'm trying to prepare myself for bad news. I know a heart murmur doesn't always mean that something is wrong with her heart, but I also know that its very likely that something is wrong . I lost a cat to undiagnosed HCM back in April and I'm still really upset about it. HCM really scares me now so I'm so worried that Samantha has it. She's not even a year old yet and while I know some kittens grow out of murmurs, this murmur wasn't heard at her initial vet appointments when she was much younger, so it appears that she's developed it.

She's already had a pretty rough life. She was found with a horrible horrible URI and was near death. We adopted her from the vet once she was on the road to recovery and even though she was MUCH better at that point, she still took a few weeks to be completely clear of the URI. Then she ended up with a horrible abscess that caused a 106.4 degree fever (the fever came first, the abscess appeared the next day). I feel like all we've done is shove pills down her throat, cut her open (spaying and when the abscess was drained) and stick needles in her non-stop. She's kind of an odd personality cat to begin with and the vet suspects she might have some very minimal brain damage from the high fever that she had. She had to stay overnight at the ER vet that night to get her fever down.

So my point is, I feel like she's already had it pretty rough for just 11 months old, but she's as sweet as can be and its breaking my heart that now something else might be wrong with her. So if you can send good vibes, prayers and happy thoughts our way I'd really appreciate it .

Bless you for taking such goo care of her. Lots of for Samantha. that it turns out to be something really minor.

Aww, poor kitty. You will definitely be in my thoughts... :

Many prayers coming your way for your little friend.

Awww hun, lots of vibes from me for your precious baby. Good luck!

Many vibes to you. Yes, the heart murmur can be scary but I have a cat who has lived many years with a heart condition. Good Luck to you.

Samantha

What a strong brave girl she is. How lucky she is to be with you, who are willing to take care of her and stand by her through all of this.

Please keep us posted on Samantha.

for good test results.

Keep us posted.

Good Luck

So what's the news? How is Samantha?

My thoughts are with you both.

Hope she is well.


Robin

Well I got good news! As of right now, she was diagnosed with a physiological murmur, meaning that the murmur is there with no other obvious problems. My vet had classified it as a 3/4, but the cardiologist said it was more of a 1/2 today. It was a 2 hour trip down there and knowing that stress can cause heart problems to get worse, I had sprayed the carrier and a blanket with Feliway for the trip. I have no idea if that actually calmed her down, but he thinks its possible. He basically said that she seems to be a cat who stresses out a LOT at the vet, and when that happens, her heart pumps faster, causing the murmur to sound worse.

He did a very through echo-cardiogram and spent a while showing my husband and me exactly what he was looking for and what he found (that everything was in normal range). He even showed us how he could see the murmur on the echo. I love this cardiologist. This is the second time I've gone to him and I'm amazed at how patient he is, and how willing he is to talk to his clients for as long as they want to. I love my vet too, and I don't think they rush anyone at the clinic, but I just get a sense that this cardiologist will never, ever rush a patient, even if he has others waiting. That just makes me feel comfortable because with other vets and human doctors, sometimes I feel like I'm talking as fast as I can to say everything I want to say, before I feel like they are done listening to me if that makes any sense. But this guy doesn't give off that vibe and I'm thankful for that because heart disease really scares me, so I do have lots of questions!

Anyway, this doesn't mean that she doesn't have heart disease, but it does mean that she is showing no obvious clinical signs of it. He wants to see her back in a year to see how the murmur is progressing, but he said that if nothing has changed by that point, he wouldn't want to see her again until something actually happened to indicate a heart problem (and of course if that happens before a year is up then he wants to see her then).

You have no idea how relieved I feel right now! With 11 cats I know that we are bound to experience pretty much anything that can go wrong with a cat at some point in time. Statistically, we're just asking to deal with all kinds of problems and based on that, I was so nervous to go to this appointment today! Plus I just took another cat to him about 2 months ago, and I tend to have bad luck in general, so I didn't really think I'd be able to walk out of his office twice, with good news each time. As much as I wanted that good news, I had prepared myself for nothing but bad news .

So we'll definitely be keeping an eye on her, but for now everything thankfully is looking good! Thank you all so much for the good vibes and thoughts. I really needed that today .

Oh, thank goodness! I'm so glad!

Now you and her and all the others (and husband, too) can just be happy with her.




Robin

Good mojo on the way!

Thanks for the happy update on Samantha! One less thing to worry about it a good thing.