In December of 2011 Simcoe was diagnosed with renal failure. It was a very upsetting time for us, with the vet giving us initial estimates of her only living another couple of months.
Through diligent daily care (a pill every day to control nausea and subcutaneous fluid injections every other day) and quarterly check-ups over these past couple years we’ve been able to manage her symptoms. She’s was able to gain weight to now be back at a healthy level. Day to day, she acts like our normal Simcoe! It’s impossible to tell that she’s sick.
On November 30th we brought her in for her latest check-up, the last one having been done in May and the vet being happy about waiting 6 months. We also had to bring Caligula along because he’s suffering from a cold that’s causing him to have productive sneezes (yuck!) and watery eyes. Poor guy. Blood work shows he’s healthy over all though, just on some supplements to try and help beat the cold.
At this checkup Simcoe was 9.5lbs, up slightly from 9.46lbs. We were pretty happy about it all until we got the results from her blood and urine work, all her levels have gone up.
BUN: 53 (normal range: 14-36)
CRE: 3.5 (normal range: .6-2.4)
Urine proteins are higher (10.19) and her Amylase has gone up from 23.77 to 29.74. Finally, her calcium levels are higher, which may mean she’s having hard time getting calcium out of kidneys and that could be concerning, so the vet called for an ionized calcium test that we brought her in for this past Saturday.
She wasn’t thrilled about going to the vet again.
In order to have a better idea where we are at, I scoured through records to dig up the BUN and CRE levels over time and made pretty graphs! For the BUN and CRE graphs I specified the ranges, which she’s mostly been above. For weight, she’s a small cat and we are happy if she’s over 9 lbs.
Today the vet called us to let us know that her calcium levels came back ok. Hooray! So for now we’re going to hang tight and see what the levels look like in a couple months, if she’s continuing to behave ok, retain weight and the levels don’t move much hopefully we’ll be able to continue with her care as it is now.