Saturday, January 24, 2015

Gozer update and more

Gozer is doing much better now. We took her and a sample of her urine in this week and the urine had a pH of 6.0. She's pretty well stopped bleeding when peeing, too, so I think she's over the worst of the problem.

Clearly the food is working, and although she's showing some signs of itching she's responding well to it. The vet said that we could easily feed her another food while we were visiting Ian's parents so that we don't trigger his mom's allergies with the fish oil. So I guess that's what we'll do for now.

Speaking of itching, I've been incredibly itchy since last night. I woke in the middle of the night scratching and scratching and scratching and I've been scratching today, too. I took some Benadryl, which helped, but I'm still itchy.

I'm thinking I'm itchy either because of the flowers I bought for the dining room or the people we had here last night. Ian hosted a pinball league night here and we had about 20 people (some of them smokers) here. I bought the flowers to brighten the (newly clean) dining room. The night went well; everyone was respectful of the house and they weren't too loud or anything. Apparently there was a problem with one machine but the others all worked just fine so we're calling the evening a success.

Thursday, January 15, 2015

Adventures with Gozer

We have had quite the week with Gozer. Sunday morning, Ian noticed that her pee looked orange, like it had blood in it. Her pee was a normal colour in the afternoon but we decided to take her to our vet on Monday morning.

We took a pee sample in to the vet's and they did an analysis which showed that it had magnesium phosphate (struvite) crystals, a pH of 7.0, bacteria, and red and white blood in it, with no sign of bile salts. They did an xray to see if she had stones but it was inconclusive so we set up an ultrasound for the next day. The vet gave Gozer an antibiotic shot because she has such a hard time with antibiotics.

The ultrasound showed no stones but a LOT of sediment from the crystals and signs of anaerobic bacteria. Fortunately, the antibiotic shot should treat that kind of bacteria as well as aerobic bacteria.

The main treatment is to get the pH in her urine down, which will make the crystals re-dissolve in her urine, and that's done by changing her food to lower the amount of protein she's getting. The vet prescribed Royal Canin Urinary SO but it has corn and chicken in it, which we think she's allergic to, and fish oil, which Ian's mom is allergic to. I contacted Gozer's dermatologist and she said to try to keep her on this food for 2-4 weeks to clear up this problem and if Gozer shows allergy signs (lots of scratching and licking and hotspots) then I need to make an appointment to take her in so that we can figure out her food.

I figure that if we do take Gozer to Ian's parent's place while she's on this food, we can just feed her squash and rice instead of the food while we're there. That way, we don't have to worry about Ian's mom's allergy - but this isn't a great long-term solution. I suspect Gozer may end up with allergies to the food before long anyways.

Unfortunately, I don't think there are many (if any) commercially available low-protein foods that meet the non-allergy requirements out there so I suspect that we will end up having to cook her food at home.

For now, Gozer is doing ok. She has varying amounts of blood in her pee from passing the crystals, which are sharp and cut her: sometimes there's none, sometimes it's all blood, and I know that when there's blood it hurts her. However, she's as happy and cuddly as usual and she's not straining to pee or anything. The ultrasound day was tough as they didn't take her out to pee afterwards (she went in not having peed in the morning) and she peed in the cage she was in :( She's bounced back since then.

Poor girl. I hope she's going to be ok.