Back to the vets with Bodie this morning....
He seemed back to normal by Wednesday, but then he didn't get up at all yesterday - no eating, no drinking, wasn't even raising his head to look at me when I called to him from the doorway, and no interest drinking the tuna juice I took to him. So the vet drew blood this morning for some lab work, to hopefully rule out the more serious feline illnesses and check for a couple of things like kidney infection that wouldn't respond to the antibiotic we tried. The fever is back, and he's lost 11 ounces over the past week, but still no outward signs of an illness other than the fever. Dr. Hartwig said she suspects something called FUO syndrome, because most illnesses have some symptoms besides fever. Sounds scary, doesn't it? But it just stands for Fever of Unknown Origin, and is what they diagnose when they've ruled out everything else. She said with FUO syndrome he would do exactly as he did this week - the cortisone injection last week would bring down the fever for several days and he'd be feeling almost like his old self, but once it was out of his system the fever would come back and he'd start acting sick again. So pending lab results showing something else, Bodie gets a daily dose of prednisone for the next 2 weeks to keep the fever under control. The vet said whatever causes FUO syndrome (most likely some unrecognized virus) doesn't seem to cause any lasting harm to cats - it's just a matter of keeping the fever down so they feel like eating and drinking enough to avoid becoming dehydated.
I'll worry till Monday in case the lab results show something serious, but for now the second cortisone injection has brought the fever back down and he's perking up a bit.
1 comment:
That sounds very much like Dengue Fever that humans get in Samoa. Same symptoms. Aspirin to knock the fever down and then repeat when it comes back which it does often. I hope the pred. works. gram
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