My Cat Toby Diagnosed with Stage 2 Renal Failure

Last week I fed Toby as normal, but she was still hungry. So I gave her more food until her belly bulged. Dumb move. The next morning at 6:30 I was awoken by a big, wet splat. She had vomited on the toilet seat cover, down the front, and all over the bathroom floor. She vomited that night’s meal as well and became very weak and wobbly in her back end.

She had this same problem a few months ago. She became incredibly weak and was drinking enormous amounts of water and urinating frequently. She fasted for several days, and I waited until she was feeling better before taking her to a veterinarian. I mostly wanted to get a potassium supplement.

I hate going to the vet, as do my cats. Most veterinarians have the same philosophy and methodology as physicians, which is to give lip service to diet and treat symptoms without finding the underlying cause of illness. They want to take charge with therapies and pharmaceuticals, and for some reason they think that cats are better off with dried kibble made of grains, waste product meat, additives and preservatives than than actual MEAT. Come again?

So when I took Toby and I also took Tibbs, because Tibbs hasn’t been grooming herself well and I suspect problems with her teeth. She doesn’t like chewing her meat and insists on a slurry.

Toby is a very cranky girl. Always has been. The vet techs took her “into the back” to draw blood. Isn’t it funny how they never want to do that in your presence? I heard Toby screaming and walked into the back to give her a recognizable voice and smell. Toby was slightly dehydrated and her veins were difficult to tap. The tech was inserting, wiggling, pulling out the needle and Toby was just miserable. They had to flip her over and try a vein on another leg. They finally got their blood and Toby’s blood glucose shot up (as evidenced on the blood test).

This is one reason why I don’t like taking sick animals to the vet. What sick animals need most is warmth and sleep. They don’t need three people holding them down by force and repeatedly shoving needles in their body.

The blood work came back:

RBC: 10.32 M/µL (normal range 5 – 10)
BUN: 83 mg/dL (normal range 16- 36) too high
CREA: 2.0 mg/dL (normal range .8 – 2.4) so this value is good
K (potassium): 3.3 mmol/L (normal range 3.5 – 5.8) got a supplement for this

Naturally the vet wanted to hospitalize Toby and put her on an IV solution to hydrate her. The last two cats I hospitalized ended up being put to sleep in short order. So no, Toby’s not staying. I compromised by allowing them to inject some fluid under her skin. Again, they took her into the back room.

I went back when I heard Toby screaming again to find three people holding her down trying to get a needle in her. They told the vet the needle kept popping out. Kept popping out? How many times had they stuck her? “This can’t be good for her immune system,” I said. They gave up on the hydration. That’s it. We’re finished here.

The doctor wanted to sell me a reduced-protein food for kidney damage control on the idea that it’s protein that damages the kidneys. I’m reading conflicting information on the net saying that reduced protein diets don’t seem to make a difference in BUN and creatinine levels and that phosphorus is the more likely culprit.

I was informed that if Toby didn’t improve in a week that I would have to bring her back and she would be hospitalized. Suppose Toby doesn’t improve because she’s simply dying. Do we submit her to invasive procedures in a foreign environment and herculean efforts to try to save her life? Or do we just let her die at home or spend as much time at home as possible and then put her to sleep when the pain becomes uncomfortable. Why are we so afraid of death? I mean, this girl is 16-1/2 years old. She’s something like in her late 70s in humans terms.

I don’t want her to die, but I certainly don’t want her spending her last days in a cage surrounded by strange people and smells. That’s what happened to Tiny, and it was awful.

I mentioned this situation to a woman whose research and efforts reversed her child’s autism via homeopathy. She recommended I try homeopathy. I took Toby to the homeopath yesterday, but I certainly wasn’t prepared for what I encountered.

The new vet walked in looking like a diminutive Jed Clampett with a pot belly smelling faintly of bad breath and, wait, was that alcohol? I explained the situation and he came back with a needle of “remedy.” I asked what it was and he said, “It’s for detoxification.” I replied, “Okay, so how does it work?” “It detoxifies,” he replied. “Do you know what detoxification is?” I tried getting across to him that I was interested in how it worked physiologically, and he said, “If you’re scared of it, we won’t use it,” and walked out the room. “Wait!” I cried.

This guy had no idea what I was after. All he could tell me was that nobody knows how homeopathy works and this substance helped the body detoxify. He threatened several times to leave the room. I finally let him give it to her. In went the needle, squeeze, a little protest by Toby, and it was all over.

He assured me that he has reversed many cases of renal failure, and he’s had his patients go back to their original vet to have lab work redone to find the values have normalized. He gave me a liquid and some capsules to give to Toby twice a day.

I asked him if he had done dental work on cats, and he was confident he could take care of Tibbs’s teeth for a much lower cost than other vets. But after I got that whiff of what I thought was alcohol, I got the feeling I shouldn’t trust him to put my beautiful Tibbs under.

I’ve had these moments of intuition, which I’ve largely ignored. The last time was when I took some shoes to a cobbler to get fixed. I went back the next week to pick up the shoes and drop off a couple coats for new zippers only to find he had lost my shoes. I went behind his counter and found them. My intuition said, “Don’t leave your coats here,” but I ignored it.

Two weeks later he said the coats had not been brought back from the business that did work for him. I went to that business, and they didn’t have the coats. I went back to the cobbler and found my coats hanging in the back of the room. He wanted $30 for replacing two zipper pulls. I only had $20, which he took. I visited the other cobbler who put on the zipper pulls, and they said they could sew in an entirely new zipper for $22. I had been had. I vowed then to begin listening to my intuition.

Even though it may be cheaper with this vet and easier than finding another vet with a better price, Tibbs is too precious to take the chance. So I’m following my intuition this time for sure. Here’s the estimate for dental work from the vet:

Dental cleaning – Level 3: $210
VetTest Profile PAP: $59
Miscellaneous Prescription Product $30 to 45
ECG Diagnostic: $49
Local Anesthetic Block: $32
Dental Xray over 5 films: $94
Clndamycin Inj 150 mg/ml: $26
Oral Surgery: $120 to 240

Total: $620 to $755

Do you suppose they clean the teeth and then extract them?

There’s another veterinary service in town that specializes in dentistry and they offer free consultation. I’m going to take her there and see what they recommend and charge. But this needs to happen soon, because bad teeth poison the whole body.