My Kitty

My flame point siamese, Isaiah has been slowly losing weight over the last few months. I tried worming him, I tried antibiotics, different food, anything I could before I had to take him into the vet. I think I put it off because I just knew it would be bad news. I, however, was expecting cancer, not an autoimmune disease. They did quite a few tests (all of which I knew they would do before he was even taken up there) before telling my husband it was one of two autoimmune diseases, aplastic anemia or immune mediated hemolytic anemia. With the aplastic anemia, his bone marrow stops making red blood cells over time, eventually completely. Your red blood cells carry oxygen needed to keep your organs alive, without them, your organs are deprived of oxygen and die. The only way to be certain he has aplastic is to do a bone marrow aspirate. There's no treatment if he has it and he would slowly fade away and die. The vet (my favorite at this clinic) said that doing the test would be cruel as it's extremely painful and wouldn't give us any results other than ruling it out if that's not what it is. The immune mediated hemolytic anemia is when your bodies white blood cells attack the red blood cells. They see the red blood cells as the enemy or a foreign invader in your body and try to kill them all off. There is treatment with this kind of anemia but he still has a 50/50 chance of dying. Right now he is on Prednisone and a high calorie diet as well as a high calorie gel. (he's not happy about any of this except for the diet which means loads of canned food) After 30 days, he will be seen by the vet again. If he hasn't improved at all, they will assume it is aplastic but if he's showing signs of gaining weight and becoming more active, he will be kept on the Prednisone for the rest of his life. I'm still learning about both of these kinds of anemia therefore, I feel a little... ignorant I suppose. Typically, I can walk into a vet's office, be told a diagnosis and immediately have a strong idea of what happens, the tests given, possible treatments, etc., so I feel a little out of sorts. However, the more I'm learning, the more discouraged I am becoming.