Many of you may remember all the UT trouble my boy Sasha had a while back. Among his first symptoms were frequent visits to the litter box. That's the day I found this website.
When a UTI is suspected the vet will do a cheap and easy test of urine with a paper test strip. This test may show an elevated white blood cell count which may warrant a course of antibiotics. Baytril seems to be the drug of choice around where I live. Sasha did not respond to the Baytril treatment and got worse. The vets and I got off on a crystals and blockages binge and wasted a lot of time and resources in a futile attempt to cure Sasha.
All while this was going on, contributors to this site were telling me to insist on a cystocentesis. To keep this story short I will omit the details of why it was never done in the beginning.
Two months of suffering, a surgery and months of steroid treatments later I finally got a vet to do a cystocentesis. As I left his treatment room with Sasha in his taxi the vet told me not to expect the lab results to show anything. Sasha had already failed to respond to antibiotic therapy. The next day he called and said Sasha did indeed have an infection. I needed to go in immediately and pick up a course of Baytril. He was concerned about the infection spreading due to the cystocentesis. One day later the lab identified a bacteria resistant to the commonly used Baytril. A new antibiotic was prescribed and Sasha has been fine ever since.
Bottom line: When the antibiotic treatment Sasha got after the first visit failed to cure him the cystcentesis and culture were the next best move.
When a UTI is suspected the vet will do a cheap and easy test of urine with a paper test strip. This test may show an elevated white blood cell count which may warrant a course of antibiotics. Baytril seems to be the drug of choice around where I live. Sasha did not respond to the Baytril treatment and got worse. The vets and I got off on a crystals and blockages binge and wasted a lot of time and resources in a futile attempt to cure Sasha.
All while this was going on, contributors to this site were telling me to insist on a cystocentesis. To keep this story short I will omit the details of why it was never done in the beginning.
Two months of suffering, a surgery and months of steroid treatments later I finally got a vet to do a cystocentesis. As I left his treatment room with Sasha in his taxi the vet told me not to expect the lab results to show anything. Sasha had already failed to respond to antibiotic therapy. The next day he called and said Sasha did indeed have an infection. I needed to go in immediately and pick up a course of Baytril. He was concerned about the infection spreading due to the cystocentesis. One day later the lab identified a bacteria resistant to the commonly used Baytril. A new antibiotic was prescribed and Sasha has been fine ever since.
Bottom line: When the antibiotic treatment Sasha got after the first visit failed to cure him the cystcentesis and culture were the next best move.
