Need advice for chronic UTI

[gailuvscats]

Your vet is horrible. I never met a vet that doesn't help with home instruction, unless they are hell bent on getting every dime you have. I bought ph stips online that are great. the site is www.ph-ion.com phone # 18887448589.
Fang is very cooperative, I just wave the stick under his stream while he is urinating. He even comes to get me when he has to pee. He pees twice a day aorund the same time. when he had crystals, he would pee in front of me. That's when I saw and felt the crystals, took some to the doc and confirmed. He had the antibiotics and my vet recommended adding cranberry to the diet. Fang wouldn't eat it, thus I found the carpon. I might go back to the cranberry powder, put in small capsules. I have to do something because the carpon is too expensive. If I can find something with the same results, not as expensive I will change.
I give Fang carpon twice a day. I have been giving it once a day occasionally, just to see how it affects his PH. His PH runs from 6.25 to 7.0 on twice a day. The once a day readings have been higher to 7.5, so I think he is a twice a dayer. I want to send my results to dr,. Belfield of Carpon and see what he thinks. I am going to try the other stuff (mel??) also because the Carpon is expensive.

Your vet is an idiot. How can she say she doesn't believe in acidyfying urine, but tells you to give food that's purpose is to acidify the urine? She's looking for more money. Also, too much acid is not good, so you can't supplement and feed acidic food at the same time, unless you are monitoring closely. In the UK, they recommend gloucosamine. I might try that too, to see if it helps the condition go away. Once , I tried not giving carpon, and Fang started licking himself a lot, and his penis looked inflammed to me. No obviouis, but I wasn't waiting for that to happen
Eventually, I am hoping Fang and I will have this down to a science. We keep working on it.

 

[littleraven7726]

Well, I am going to side with the vet a little bit. Amitriptyline can help, especially, if the vet suspects an interstitial cystitis type situation. If you work with your vet (whoever it is) and make sure dosages are monitored and adjusted, it can really help. I truly believe the 3-4 months Raven was on Amitriptyline is what stabilized him (he was having painful recurring UTIs with no cause for months).

Maristavet has a good page about Amitriptyline.

 

[sinbadsmom]

A very simple way to collect a urine sample, if you're home when the kitty uses the litter box, is just to slide a plastic measuring spoon under the cat (this should be tablespoon size or larger, preferably with the spoon's bowl an oval shape and as long a handle as possible). No, I'm not joking. It works. I've recommended it elsewhere and others have tried and found it works. Second simplest is getting plastic crystals from a vet, to use as litter in a clean litter box.

My recommendation for both FUS (feline urinary syndrome, crystals in the urine) and UTIs is to give vitamin C and probiotics.

Probiotics are very important to replace the good bacteria killed off by the antibiotics. Most doctors treating human patients are aware of that and will prescribe probiotics, though years ago they didn't realize they should. In my experience vets usually don't bother prescribing probiotics, though I suppose they eventually will. The simplest way to give probiotics is to buy capsules of the freeze-dried bacteria at health food stores (these should be kept refrigerated in the store as well), twist open a capsule and sprinkle some of the powder onto a bit of wet food the kitty will eat immediately, and mix it in. There are a lot of good brands out there, all of which would help, but the two I buy most often are Now brand Acidophilus Two Billion, called that because there are supposed to be that many lactobacilli in each capsule, and Michael's Probiotic Factors, which has half a dozen different strains of bacteria plus food for them.

Vitamin C got my Sinbad over FUS when she had that around 1990, and my Frosty over UTIs three years ago. FUS is not as common in female cats, but Sinbad had it anyway and the crystals were easy to see in her urine, because I used Litter Green cat litter they showed up against. She refused to eat the prescription food. I finally tried vitamin C, just crushed ascorbic acid tablets into fine powder and added that to her food, and it got her over the FUS in a couple of days. I'd read about using vitamin C for this in one of two little paperbacks on cat care I had then, and I can't recall which one. One was No Naughty Cats, and the other was City Cats. They're still around here somewhere but apparently packed away, and I don't know who the authors were.

I can give you a link, though, to a journal article by Dr. Wendell Belfield on using vitamin C to treat pets, including for urinary tract problems like your kitty's:

http://www.seanet.com/~alexs/ascorba...-v2-n3-p10.htm

The section on urinary tract problems is about 2/3 of the way down the page.

Dr. Belfield sells carpon now, but he recommended plain vitamin C there (usually the sodium ascorbate form, buffered with small amounts of sodium), and I just used plain vitamin C and it worked. Sodium ascorbate might be best since it's slightly less acidic and more can be given in small amounts of food, but plain ascorbic acid, mixed into food, will work if the other isn't available. You can usually find both sodium ascorbate and ascorbic acid in pure crystalline form at health food stores. I buy NutriBiotic brand, which is pharmaceutical grade.

Vitamin C and probiotics also helped my Frosty when she had UTIs for several months in 2004, following dental work (she'd never had any UTIs before that year, though she was 11 years old). I thought I would try the antibiotics first because I listened to a vet who told me that vitamin C might be "too acidic" for Frosty. After 12 courses of two different kinds of antibiotics, none of which did more than temporarily alleviate some symptoms, I finally gave her probiotics and vitamin C and that took care of the problem quickly, and she hasn't had a UTI since then.

None of these are expensive supplements. A one pound jar of sodium ascorbate crystals, which will last a long long time, probably years, is about $20, less than some of the bottles of flavored antibiotics I gave Frosty trying to get her over those UTIs.

That article of Dr. Belfield's refers to a tomcat with caculi being given 1-2 grams of sodium ascorbate a day. My vague recollection is that I gave my Sinbad, a huge female cat weighing nearly 15 lbs, about 500 mg a day, and that worked, but the higher dose shouldn't be harmful in a grown cat.

I hope this info helps. It can be so worrisome and frustrating trying to help a kitty with FUS or a UTI.

Cindy

 

[jean44]

First of all, I think your vet could be more helpful. I don't understand why she doesn't want you to test Grace at home. My feeling has always been that the more I know about my cats' medical condition the more I will be able to help them. Regarding test strips, if you don't want to order them on line they are readily available at most pharmacies. That said, I have not done urine testing at home, myself. I do test my Eric's blood glucose at home- but that is another issue entirely.

Regarding pyelonephritis- I'll give you a link to a good article about it. According to this article the infection actually starts in the bladder and moves to the kidney. Also, chronic pyelonephritis is seen in cats with small kidneys. The acute form of the disease is seen in cats with enlarged kidneys. Here's the link.
http://www.petplace.com/cats/pyelone...ats/page1.aspx

Just to let you know, I'm one of those who is giving two of my cats L-Methionine daily. I buy the capsules at the health food store split them open and hide the powder in their food. If the flavor of the food is strong enough, such as Venison, the gobble it up with no problem. Currently each cat receives about 250mg./day. Eric's pH tested at 6.0 two weeks ago. Some vets disagree with giving L-Methionine due to the risk of calcium oxalate crystals if the urine pH is too low- generally under 6.0. As gailuvscats said, the same risk it there with a food that is intended to acidify urine. The key is monitoring urine pH and your cat's behavior.

I agree with beandip about urine pH. A pH of 6.5 may be technically in the normal range but if crystals are present something is wrong. Also, there is a difference in the litter box behavior of my cat Kolohe as his pH approaches 6.5. For him lower is better.

Good luck to you and Grace. I hope you can find a solution to his problems.

 

[southerngem22]

Littleraven, to be honest, I didn't allow them to test Grace this time because I knew that this infection was going to mean an ultrasound. So my thinking was it really didn't matter since the ultrasound would either show stones/debris or show nothing. So it seemed redundant to have the doc poke a needle in to get his 'pure' sample.

At this point, the ultrasound showed no evidence of crystals, and the vet is going with the assumption that its a bacterial infection of some kind.

When your kitty was put on Amitriptylene did you get the warning about blindness? I read on one vet meds site that it can also cause heart arrythmia's and an ekg should be done while using this product. Was any of that mentioned to you?? According to the site, this medicine was originally prescribed for bi-polar disorder or other mental problems in humans. I'm glad it helped your kitty though...and most especially glad that it didn't hurt in any way. I'm going to check out the link you provided, so thanks for that! When you say that Raven is a "normal cat" now, do you mean that he can eat regular food without any problems? How long since his last infection? Just curious since the two kitties seem to have similar experiences.

Beandip, yes, Grace has had crystals every time he's been tested for them. And I agree that apparently 6.5 is too high for him.

Gailuvscats, thanks for the link to the pH strips. I'm definitely going to monitor this on my own. I, too, was thinking my vet might just be after money. And while price is important, I really want Gracie to be normal, even if it costs me a lot. The vet just seemed to be getting upset simply because I wasn't agreeing to everything she said. You'd think that they'd prefer owners who have an active interest in their pets healthcare, instead of getting irked that someone dared to question them.

SinbadsMom, I totally agree about probiotics. I'm currently using one now for Grace. This one is a powder, you mix it into water. Grace loves the stuff and slurps it right up.

Wow, there is so much info on acidifying the urine. I'm going to have to spend some time online, researching all these links and sites to find the right product for Grace. But I appreciate everything that each person has shared. You can't imagine how helpful its been knowing you guys were here, giving me feedback and information! Thanks!!!

Jean44, I followed your link concerning Phylonephritis, it was good information. On the link I had viewed earlier, this is what it said about the shrunken kidneys:

chronic pyelonephritis appears as shrunken, irregular kidneys. The kidneys show discrete, yellow or pale, raised abscesses on the renal surface with infarction and scarring in some animals. The pelvic and ureteral mucosal surfaces may be inflamed, thickened, reddened or granular and coated with exudate.

And Grace's kidneys were normal, just smaller. I would actually consider that Grace might have had this problem, except that ever since his first infection, the vets have consistently told me that he had very small kidneys. And I might still have considered it, except I read the Ultrasound report. The radiologist used this phrase: "Its highly unlikely" that he had that disease. So I'm really questioning my vets ethics at this point.

So another question or two. For those who had cats with this kind of history, and then went to using urine acidifying products, did your kitties get oxalate crystals? And if so, around what pH did they occur?

 

[littleraven7726]

Originally Posted by SouthernGem22

Littleraven, to be honest, I didn't allow them to test Grace this time because I knew that this infection was going to mean an ultrasound. So my thinking was it really didn't matter since the ultrasound would either show stones/debris or show nothing. So it seemed redundant to have the doc poke a needle in to get his 'pure' sample.

At this point, the ultrasound showed no evidence of crystals, and the vet is going with the assumption that its a bacterial infection of some kind.

When your kitty was put on Amitriptylene did you get the warning about blindness? I read on one vet meds site that it can also cause heart arrythmia's and an ekg should be done while using this product. Was any of that mentioned to you?? According to the site, this medicine was originally prescribed for bi-polar disorder or other mental problems in humans. I'm glad it helped your kitty though...and most especially glad that it didn't hurt in any way. I'm going to check out the link you provided, so thanks for that! When you say that Raven is a "normal cat" now, do you mean that he can eat regular food without any problems? How long since his last infection? Just curious since the two kitties seem to have similar experiences.

Raven's UTIs before he went on Amitriptylene never showed crystals or bacteria. I was not given any warnings about it before he was put on it. The only info I found out after he had been on it, was that if they are on it long term they have to have blood tests regularly to make sure the liver is working right. When we moved here and consulted with a cat-only vet, she said she uses Amitriptyline on a short term basis, never the way our old vet did. When we consulted with her she was concerned about his eyes--the medication was making his eyes be dilated most of the time. So we weaned him off and he's been fine since. I do wish my first vet had given us more information on the Ami, but it's too late now. What's done is done. It did help stabilize him, so for that we are thankful. Our old vet wanted him on it *forever*, which we know is not necessary as he's been fine.

I still make sure any dry food I buy is for urinary tract health, but for wet food--I just buy what he will eat. He doesn't get much dry food either, mostly a wet food diet.

Raven's last UTI was in June 2004.

Have you checked into Cosequin? It's supposed to help rebuild the lining of the bladder that gets irritated in cystitis. One theory is cats who get interstitial cystitis have a thinner bladder lining, so it is more easily irritated. We used Cosequin for those 3-4 months, too.

 

[jean44]

My cats have not developed calcium oxalate crystals. I start worrying if their pH drops below 6.0. Both Kolohe and Eric had a pH of 5.5 in mid-May. At that point I slightly decreased the L-Methionine dosage for both of them. Ideally, I'd like to see it at 6.2 or 6.3 but I don't know if we'll ever get there.