Well, Stinky was feeling a little better and then she got really sick again. A couple of weeks ago, I took her to the vet and she was diagnosed with having diabetes, a bladder infection (the infection gave her a very high fever and was probably causing the worst of her symptoms) and kidney failure (not terriby serious at that point and the doctor had hoped that controlling the diabetes might help this). She took antibiotics and started getting insulin shots and was feeling good again.
Then I took her in a couple of days ago to get her glucose and kidney numbers checked. She had gained a half a pound and her glucose was slightly better than the number at our check last week, which were both promising. And then the vet got the results of the blood test for her kidneys. Her "BUN" number was off-the-charts bad. (Those of you in the medical field and those of you that have dealt with kidney disease probably understand what this means. I don't. I think - based on a tiny bit of reading - it means she's got tons and tons of toxins - and something about uremia - in her blood because her kidneys are not doing what they're supposed to do.) Our vet said that ordinarily, she would start giving subcutaneous fluids at this point, but a while back we discovered that Stink has fluid on her lungs, so sub-Q fluids are not an option for her (essentially, it could drown her). Our vet was shocked that she was still eating (she was up to that point) and suggested that I may not even want to buy a second bottle of insulin because Stinky may not be around long enough to need it. The only thing we really could do was to try to reduce her protein intake, so we took away the Taste of the Wild dry food that she loved.
Now she's not eating at all. And her butt goo has returned. She has retreated to her little bin in the tiny coat closet and only stumbles out to drink water and go pee. I'm going to force feed her tonight and see if she will turn around again like she's done when she had the butt goo/no appetite /hiding in the bin symptoms in the past. But I won't continuously force feed her just to keep her alive. If she doesn't start eating on her own after a few days of force feeding, I'll stop and just let whatever happens happen. So, needless to say, I'm scared and worried and depressed and feel helpless. She doesn't seem to be in too much distress - she just sleeps in her bin all the time. She purrs when I come to visit her and intermittently swats at me with surprising strength (normal behavior for once-feral Stink). She has missed the past few insulin injections because she hasn't eaten anything. I'm cautiously hopeful that she'll turn around again like she always does (Jon and I have jokingly compared her to cockroaches and my Grandaddy Cole - they seem like they'll come back from anything and go on forever :)), but still....
I have a slow weekend this weekend, so, unless anything major happens with Stinky and I'm just too depressed to do it, I will catch up on posting pictures of the pets I've cared for over the past week (wow, I've gotten really behind!) Stay tuned for pics of your pets and thanks for your patience.
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