Posted by DW on October 21, 2009, 1:33 am
75.161.86.145
On Monday I took two of the senior cats in for bloodwork. Curie is about 17 and was diagnosed with renal failure 6 months ago. Golda is about 16 and 18 months ago we had her thyroid treated with radioactive iodine for hyperthyroidism.
Curie now has a hyper thyroid and that masks (partially neutralizes) some of the kidney failure symptoms. I am going to use the thyroid meds and not pursue the radioactive treatment because of her age, the expense, and the reality that her kidneys are going to burn out anyway. Right now she's looks like stage 2 or 3 of the kidney failure but if we get the thyroid under control she'll pop up to stage 3 or 4 for the thyroid.
Gold's thyroid is still fine but now she's stage 1 renal failure, so I no longer can tell myself she'll make it to 20.
Meds for both will run about $100 a month ... with lots of if's regarding them actually taking them. Golda will be on one med and she might not take it. Curie will be on three(1 for the thyroid and 2 for the kidney failure), plus we'll have to continue her twice a day feedings of wet food with extra water, maybe go to a kidney failure diet but since those are not very palatable, I've already decided I'm not going to try the expensive Rx diets. There are some non-Rx diets that I might look at though.
Also Negrita still needs eye drops ever other day or so, plus a lot of extra hand feeding of whatever she'll eat. For the short term the bailisk we got from my niece needs eye drops and antibiotc injections 2x a day.
In the next four to six months I'll take in 4 more senior kitties for bloodwork and I expect to find at least one more with some metabolic issues at that time.
We said no more heroics, especially with the very senior pets, but food supplements and meds, some which must be given 2x a day, is kind of walking that line for us. It sounds easy and not too expensive, but it will take time to make sure each one actually ingests the medicine they are supposed to. We'll give it a try and of course watch for quality of life issues.
To get to my question though, how do you feel about the prospect of euthanizing a terminally ill animal before the quality of life is degraded much?
If I withhold Curies watered down food for about 12 hours, she starts to crash. So I don't do that - there just is no 'skipping a meal' with her anymore. I was thinking with Curie, now that she has two chronic/terminal conditions to manager that I might call an end to it next spring even if her quality of life was still good.
I'm not sure that's fair or right, but for all practical purposes she's on life support. ...and renal failure kitties are unpleasant. She pees everywhere. She leaves little turds everywhere. She vomits a lot and her breath is horrible. All these are normal symptoms for her condition and maybe they will improve with the meds, but in the end she's a lot of work and she's confined (by her own choice) to our only other bedroom. There are days when I put out a clean blanket on the bed and by the time I get the previous one in the washing machine, she's fouled the new one. If it's not her, it's one of the other geriatric cats that I feed in that room.
I just cannot help but ask, how long is long enough when it comes to keeping this or any other aleady aged pet alive? Is it kinder to chug along until the animal feels horrible or is it kinder to send them over the bridge before the final months when the quality of life would start to degrade? I honestly don't know. I almost euthanized her in June when she had a middle level crash, but now I'm better at preventing the crashes. She's been really happy since then so I know I shouldn't make any hasty decisions going forward.
*Sigh* We shall most likely have worked through our senior cat population by the time Blaze is getting truly old, but of course I half-fear he or on of the other dogs will get cancer or something else awful. Hope not as we have our hands full already.
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