Well, we took Lily to the vet for the third time this month yesterday. She fought up a storm with the vet, but they miraculously got another blood sample. They've been monitoring her creatine levels since we first took her in in the middle of the month (before the pet food recall). It turns out that her creatine levels have been increasing in her blood since the first time we took her in. She was vomitting a TON a couple weeks ago, and seemed to have a UTI, so we had her treated for that. But then a week later, the pet food recall was announced, and we took her back to check for signs of the poisoning, because we, in fact, were feeding her the recalled foods (Iams). She's lost about a half a pound in the past few weeks, and she's been drinking tons of water. She has this new thing where she just sits next to the water bowl, staring at the water, and drinking now and again. Long story short, she's been diagnosed with renal tubular necrosis, which eventually results in kidney failure. We'll begin giving her a daily medication to slow the damage to the kidney, and continue to give her a new low-protein, high-carb diet. She doesn't seem to like the new food, and that might explain why she's losing the weight. But I don't know what else to do. Her vet said that some kidney patients stick around for a couple of years, so that was the hope that she offered us. A "couple of years" doesn't sound like a lot to me. She turns ten in July, so she's still just a baby. I wanted to keep her around forever, and I have done everything I can to keep her safe by keeping her indoors. But something random like this happens, and now there's no reversing the damage. I haven't cried enough, and I don't know what I'll do without by little baby. I've tried to stay positive, but it's hard to know that I may soon lose my favorite little companion to something that could have been avoided if the pet food manufacturer had taken better care.
Sorry to bring up such bad news, but I wanted to let everyone know the diagnosis. In the meantime, we're still lucky to have her in our life.
Now I just have to figure out how to get Menu Foods to pay for this. I don't even know where to begin.
