possible misdiagnosis of FIP????

Hi all, i am new to this board and would like to share my story and welcome in any advice or opinions!

About a week ago now I ended up with a stray cat who was brought in to my job by a couple who said they found her on the side of the road, long story short they didnt know what to do with her so i took her home with me that night, we set up a room for her in our house away from our other two male cats. She was very underweight, her left eye looked terrible, she looked to have ear mites, upper respiratory infection, scabs all over,  she looked like she had been through hell and back.  She instantly felt right at home with us, she ate and used the liter box and sat on our laps and we loved her instantly. 

The next day I brought her to the vet, i explained to them the story of how she ended up in my care.   This is where my concern begins, the vets demeanor quickly changed from good to bad once she took her temperature and did a physical examination, she had a fever and slight distended abdomen, she told me right off that it doesn't look good. I must have been at the vets office for 4 hours that day, we had very little one on one talk with the  vet except for her briefing us about the test results in between her other patients.  She ruled out aids/leukemia after she preformed blood work, she then went on to say she believed this was possibly the dry form of FIP (up until now i knew nothing about this virus) she told us she was severely anemic with a blood count of 12!  she also performed a tap on her stomach and said she found the tiniest amount of fluid. Anyway like i said we barely had much one on one with the dr that day, her advice to us was to have the cat put down (she seemed sincere and honest and not at all cold about it) she said this cat is very sick and i would only be telling you this if i really believed it, i of course  cried hysterical and we thought about it for a while and decided we trusted her enough  at the time to make that hard decision, minutes from signing the forms to go through with it we changed our mind and said we want to bring her home with us and let her life out her life.  so we did.

She has been with us like i said for a week now and she looks great, her scabs cleared up, her hair has grown back she has such an appetite, her eye is looking better, basically she does not look nor act like a cat that is on deaths door, she is playful and loving and active. We are keeping her quarantined from our other cats still however she is chomping at the bit to get out of this room.  It upsets me so much to think we almost ended this cats life when she is still so full of life!  The dr never brought up any other possible diagnoses, she did not treat any other ailments we told her about, her ears were not treated, or her possible upper resp, she just immediately jumped to worst case scenario and we almost pulled the plug on her. 

I guess my main concern is that she is not properly diagnosed and we are not treating her for what else she may have.  We have her on 2ml of Prednisone a day, feeding her Wellness core 3x a day and have been giving her omega 3 supplements. We have been doing everything we could possibly be doing to keep her healthy, she looks 100 times better already than she did at first, i am not trying to get my hopes up, but i do believe this could be worth a second opinion.  I m sorry this ended up to be longer than i had wanted but if any one has any advice they would like to hsrae please do! we are very much in love with this sweet little girl and we would do just about anything within our means for her.

I would get a second opinion.  The dry form of FIP especially is very difficult to diagnose, it is actually at this time impossible to get a definitive diagnoses.  I believe this vet jumped the gun especially with a kitty that is in bad shape from time as a stray.

Hi lulugirl and welcome to the forum !

Second opinions....these can be helpful, even life savers....ONLY IF the second Vet IS A COMPETENT DIAGNOSTICIAN OF FIP !

Vets are NOT 'created equal' - a lesson learned here over and over again.

This is a wonderful forum, perhaps the best of all feline discussion forums.....but, when it comes to the intricacies of complicated feline health diseases/conditions, those of us who have been "around the block" have found that the specialized online communities serve us far better. (It's very much like human medicine.....we do not expect our family doctors to be as knowledgeable about specific diseases as we do of medical specialists).

There are specialized online communities for almost every one of the chronic feline diseases/conditions....FIP is no different.

This FIP community has been running since 2002 and has served more than 2500 people and their FIP kitties. If anyone is going to have answers to your questions, it will be them.

These groups also have lists of Veterinarians with proven competence and expertise. They can review with you what tests/diagnostics have been done and advise you about the latest protocols in assessing for FIP.

Personally, I would be telling my story in front of those people.

You can find them here:  Support and Info for Owners of FIP Cats

I'd advise you to set up a new dedicated email account for the group (they use email as their "operating platform) - for me, that really helps me manage the info flow.

Perhaps, if you join up there, you could also keep the rest of us up-to-date about the very latest in breakthroughs and therapies that the "insiders" are aware of.

Hi

  If she seems well in herself now, is there any possibilty she could be pregnant?  I mean , do you know if she's spayed or not ? has her slight swelling of the abdomen gone down or not ? have her nipples pinked up?

I doubt she could be pregnant.  Don't know if she was spayed as the vet didn't seem to check a lot of things.  They did an x-ray of her abdomen so I am sure they would have figured out she was pregnant.  She is only about 6.4 pounds at this moment, gained about 0.2 pounds in the last few days.  We have been consistent with only wellness brand wet food with no grains.  Roughly 1.5 cans a day, 1/2 5.5oz can per serving.  She seems to always want more but we don't want to overdo it.

feed her as much as she wants. for the next few weeks let her get used to having food. Since its been a week since you got her and she isn't vomiting from eating too much I would let her eat what she wants-then in a month reevalute the situation. I am sure she is very happy to have a good home to live in. The thing about FIP is there is no definite way to test. The swelling could be from malnutrition. If she is anemic you can always get a blood transfusion if its needed. Did they send you home with something called pet tecnic? Its a liquid B vitamin meds that is given daily.

How is the color of her gums/tongue? IF its pale white then I would consider further treatment of transfusion. She needs blood cells to live. Its possible she was loaded with fleas and got that blood parasite that kills the red blood cells. Did they test for this? Feline Infectious Anemia (Hemobartonellosis)? If this is whats going on Doxycycline I believe is the antibiotic needed. It needs to be given for 3 weeks.

there is something I would start with. And maybe asking friends/coworkers if they recommend a vet. its possible this vet is being honest but its always good to have a second opinion.

If she's well in herself and eating well , i wouldn't worry too much at this stage tbh. 

Vets don't always get it right and as another poster said, FIP is very difficult to be certain of.

In fact, it can only be absolutely definite on postmortem.

One of my 12 yr spayed girls had a  swollen

abdomen getting larger for the last couple of weeks. She has not been unwell or off her food at all but i was starting to wonder

about  FIP even though she's got no other symtoms.

I got up this morning and she's almost back to normal. I can only assume phantom pregnancy.

 Phantom pregnancy in this situation is extremely unusual especially

since she's been spayed for 8 yrs, is an indoor cat with no access to even neutered toms, but at this point , there isn't really

any other explanation for it .  I've had a cat in the past that had a phantom although she had been mated and wasn't spayed.

This girl was never spayed properly as she's always still called but nowhere near as strong as she did when in tact.

Just bear phantom pregnancy in mind as a slim possibility. It does happen!

Thanks everyone for your replies.  We have an appointment for tomorrow with another vet.  Wish us luck!  We will update with the second opinion as soon as we get an answer.

Just to update if anyone is still actively reading. We brought LuLu in several days ago to a new vet who was really great. He did a full examination of her, checked for ear mites, fleas.. All the stuff the previous vet completely ignored. They had faxed over the blood work from the last vet visit and we plan to do a recheck in another week. Anyway, he never came close to the diagnoses of FIP until I mentioned toward the end of the visit that was the last Drs diagnoses be seemed rather shocked that her conclusion was FIP and her only reccomdation was to put the cat down. She did not have a fever, he heard no labored breathing and sound her lungs sounded clear and didnt see anything suspect. His main concern was her anemia, which we are treating with prednisone and will recheck this week. She's also on .8 ml of docycycline everyday as well as a steroid cream for her eye. She's currently still eating like crazy, playful and energetic, drinking water, peeing, pooping, cleaning herself acting like any other healthy cat. I feel much better that was got a second opinion, I still however can't totally shake the idea thag maybe she does have FIP after all, the way her left eye appears is really the most concerning symptom to me. we're going to continue to treat her and have her followed up with this new vet. We still have her quarantined in a seperate room from our other cats which is the hardest part for me and her as well. It's kind of crazy how two vets could have totally different outcomes.

lulugirl -

'Remember this?

White Shadow said:

 
This is a wonderful forum, perhaps the best of all feline discussion forums.....but, when it comes to the intricacies of complicated feline health diseases/conditions, those of us who have been "around the block" have found that the specialized online communities serve us far better. (It's very much like human medicine.....we do not expect our family doctors to be as knowledgeable about specific diseases as we do of medical specialists).

There are specialized online communities for almost every one of the chronic feline diseases/conditions....FIP is no different.

This FIP community has been running since 2002 and has served more than 2500 people and their FIP kitties. If anyone is going to have answers to your questions, it will be them.

These groups also have lists of Veterinarians with proven competence and expertise. They can review with you what tests/diagnostics have been done and advise you about the latest protocols in assessing for FIP.

Personally, I would be telling my story in front of those people.

You can find them here:  Support and Info for Owners of FIP Cats

I'd advise you to set up a new dedicated email account for the group (they use email as their "operating platform) - for me, that really helps me manage the info flow.

Click to expand...

Once again, I suggest you put your cat's "case" up in front of that group....tell the story, tell the symptoms, get a copy of the entire file from the original Vet, get the same from the new Vet (these are things people in that group would have told you to do), you may be asked to post specific file info to the group, remember to include information about this eye issue.....

You say that you "can't totally shake the idea that maybe she does have FIP".....well, perhaps by sharing some facts with people who've been dealing with FIP for 14 years,  who are more knowledgeable/up-to-date on FIP than some Vets...you could get some resolution to that idea.

These people could also guide you along to ensure that this new Vet does the diagnostic work that is most relevant to FIP.

Should you end up needing them, there are new FIP diagnostics and treatment info coming out - almost monthly, now - those people will have the latest on all of these.

(just btw: most experienced 'cat-people' know that it's a smart idea to keep their own paper or e-copy of their cat's vet file at home for emerg situations)

Oh....she can't remain anonymous any longer! ......and.....any shareable pix ?