Zurik’s Check-Up: Too Little Fluids!!

Today was Zurik’s check-up at the vet’s. This is after 19 days from the last pleural effusion aspiration (drawing out of fluids from right lung cavity).

My heart was beating so fast when he was being checked with ultrasound. I tried to look out of the “black spots” indicative of spots with fluids. Even my untrained eye could see there were only relatively small black spots on the screen.  Yay!!  Small spots on the right lung cavity and NONE on the left!

So yes, in fact, the vet said it looked like the spots on the right is even smaller this round.

And this is after NINETEEN days!!

Yay!!!

Then, a further ultrasound check was done on Zurik’s abdominal area and there were so fluids there too!!  I asked if his heart needs to be checked using an echocardiogram but the vet says there is no symptoms of any heart problem in Zurik so we can rule that out for now.

The vet says we can reduce the steroids to half tablet once a day (which is half of the current dosage). Zurik started with half a tablet once a day on 13th April and it was increased to half a tablet twice a day on 24th April. So, it’s been a month now and it’s time to take the next step and taper down the steroids!

I asked if the diagnosis is still FIP and the vet says it still is. This is based the yellow liquid sucked out 19 days ago and earlier – all had a high reading of 6.5 on the refractometer. Such fluids is symptomatic of FIP and it isn’t fluids from the heart.  The body’s reaction to the FIP virus is inflammation of the blood vessels (vasculitis) and this inflammation causes fluids with protein to leak out from the blood vessels.

The vet explained that perhaps being a geriatric cat (and not a kitten), Zurik may have better immunity to fight the disease so this explains why he is doing reasonably well.

Still, we should be grateful that there was too little fluids to be sucked out today – that is what I had hoped for! Now, tapering down the steroids is another milestone and we hope we can achieve this (ie. we hope that the halved steroid dosage will be sufficient to keep the fluids at bay).

Zurik weighed 4.56kg on the clinic scale. The gradual weight gain is also a good sign. I hope this means that less protein is leaking out (based on my own understanding).

We will take it one day at a time.

Today, even the vet said, “It’s good!”

Hooray!!

Mess not with me….

There’s those menacing eyes…..!!!

We are tough, aren’t we?

Source: https://myanimalcare.org/2019/05/23/zuriks-check-up-too-litt..

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