Lukaska’s Diagnosis
posted at 2:20 am
on Dec. 9, 2004
Previous entry:
Jack and Bobby - The Gay Episode
Next entry:
80% Self Referential Post
The vet told me about the news about Lukaska last week, and I’ve been wracking my brain for some way to make it funny.
But it’s, how you say, not so funny.
We went back to the vet on Sunday for the test results, and she explained the situation.
Lukaska is nine, and she’s just been diagnosed with chronic renal incapacity. It used to be called chronic renal failure, but the medical profession decided that sounded a bit, well, dire. What she’s really been diagnosed with is that her kidneys don’t work very well any more.
I’m having a very hard time treating this as a permanent condition. About 98% of my interactions with doctors and sick people have revolved around illnesses that can be cured. But with Lukaska’s kidneys, when a cat shows up and has these symptoms, it’s unlikely—see, there I go being falsely positive—it’s virtually unheard of that kidney function will return.
What this means, is that if we can stabilizer her with treatments, she could live for weeks, months or years. It’s an unknown. But it is certain that if we don’t treat her, she will d-i-e-. (I don’t like to type it or say it out loud. It sounds kind of a little ominous.)
Over the next week or two, we’ll find out how our current home treatments are helping her. Those treatments include:
The funny-tragic thing is, she tends to leak a bit when the needle comes out. 
So her official new nickname is Leakaska now.
We’re also supposed to start giving her potassium and maybe calcium and what not.
And once we’ve got this kidney thing under control, we’ll see how some of her other systems are doing: she has liver-related issues (possibly related to kidney problems) and she has high blood pressure (possibly related to the fact that it took two strong adults to hold her down when they took her blood pressure.)
Basically, we’ve going to be making her comfortable, keeping her hydrated, trying to fatten her up, and see where things go from there.
And as far as what caused this condition, that’s the most frustrating thing of all: we have no idea. She’s three years younger than the earliest age that kidneys tend to fail in cats. She hasn’t eaten any kidney-zapping toxins (lilies and antifreeze are the usual culprits). She hasn’t, as far as I know, suffered any fever or massive infection (they’re testing for that as well and we’ll know on Friday). So perhaps it’s a genetic condition, or perhaps it’s a combination of those things, and there’s no way to know, really, and the vet says it wouldn’t change the treatment, so…
Aimee sees to be fine, and it’s very unlikely that Lukaska’s problem could spread. So we’re focused on treatment.
Anyway, that’s the latest news. If you have any ideas for how to fatten up a cat, please speak up now!
Five Live Links
- Condé Nast (i.e. Wired) Acquires Ars Technica #
- How’s Your Ear for Pitch? #
- A blog of short video stories about the people who post to Craigslist Missed Connections #
- Fido’s offering a cell phone service that uses internet connectivity when you’re at home #
- Did you know that Royal Bank had a twee group blog called RBC p2p? #