A Christmas Miracle.

I lost my joy of celebrating Christmas the year my father died. What was left of my family struggled along trying to celebrate it, but it was never the same. Over the years as my family faded away and I’ve dedicated my life to rescuing cats, I don’t have much reason to feel festive. It’s just another day, but at least one that doesn’t come with phone calls about cats who need rescue (knock wood).

This year has been very very bad for me financially speaking. Right now I can’t even think about what will happen next year. I may end up like so many others, losing my home, but I’ll try as hard as I can to turn things around. It’s just another reason why Christmas gives me the blues. I’d love to buy gifts and fill the pantry with special treats, but we can’t do that yet again…yet another Christmas where we sit around and shrug our shoulders.

©2011 Nicky in better days-in his favorite position-belly up.

Yesterday I noticed our 13 year old cat, Nicky, hunched over, looking depressed. Later that day he coughed. It sounded bad. He vomited some mucus and kept coughing. It sounded wet, bubbly. The first thing I thought was the upper respiratory tract infection the orange foster kittens have been battling for months, has hit our cat, too. But Nicky didn’t have similar symptoms. This “cold” effected the cat’s eyes more than anything else and Nicky looked otherwise healthy.

I felt the usual sense of panic build in my gut. I talked to Sam, who is Nicky’s “daddy” and who is in charge of making the health care choices for his cat. We tried to take Nicky’s temp, but that was NOT going to happen he fussed so much. We listened to him as best we could, but Nicky purrs a lot so it was tough to make out if he had trouble breathing.

I wanted to get him to Dr. Larry right away, but Sam wanted to wait. Dr. Larry had a number of emergencies and if Nicky was stable-even if he WAS open-mouth breathing-that we had to wait. I kept imagining having to run Nicky to the ER Vet because they have an oxygen cage and Dr. Larry doesn’t. I started adding up the vet bill in my mind if we had to go to the ER. The sense of panic began to rise.

We continued to observe Nicky. When he meowed it sounded bubbly and he couldn’t get much of a meow out. It was muffled, at best. Nicky was still eating, but he struggled to eat because he couldn’t breathe when he had food in his mouth. I spent a fitful night wondering what the day would bring. It’s Christmas Eve, of course here we are on the cusp of a health crisis that will surely break us for good.

©2013 Nicky waiting for Dr. Larry.

This morning, Nicky seemed no worse but no better. We packed him up and got him to Dr. Larry’s office. The waiting room was crowded and the phones were ringing. I guessed we weren’t the only ones having a problem right before a major holiday.

We finally got to see Dr. Larry. I was so worried by then that I thought I was going to burst into tears as Dr. Larry listened to Nicky’s chest. Dr. Larry asked us what we had noticed wrong, then weighed Nicky and took his temperature (it was normal). Dr. Larry makes this face. He purses his lips together, frowning and draws his eyebrows down. I know it means bad, but not how bad.

He said he didn’t hear anything terrible in Nicky’s chest. His heart sounded good. His organs didn’t feel swollen. His lungs sounded maybe a bit wet but nothing serious. He wanted to do blood work to rule out infection or virus and maybe he’d snap an x-ray. I told him to do his best to keep the costs down. As it was I knew that this was about the end of what we could spend on pretty much anything and it was going to our cat.

Dr. Larry told us to come back in about an hour so we left to run errands and worry about the results. You see, Nicky has Chronic Kidney Disease. He’s not in renal failure yet, but he’s a senior cat with ever worsening kidney function values which are expressed in BUN and Creatinine. Two years ago we caught Nicky’s kidney problem and Sam has been giving Nicky sub-q fluids every other day since the diagnosis. Of course what is going on with Nicky’s kidneys could affect everything else. Where we going to find out that Nicky was nearing the end of his disease and that was the reason he couldn't fight off the upper respiratory infection?

Nicky's blood work from a year ago showing his renal values are very high.

What seemed an eternity later, Dr. Larry called us into the exam room. That expression I fear was on his face. Tears welled up in my eyes. Then Larry’s expression opened up. He smiled as he said:

“It’s a Christmas miracle.”

I couldn’t even imagine what he’d tell us next.

Nicky did not have pneumonia, but he does have an upper respiratory tract infection of some sort. It’s not too bad and we should keep a close eye on him to make sure it doesn’t get worse. No antibiotics right now.

Wow. Well that was great news, but not really a miracle per se.

Then Dr. Larry pointed at Nicky’s blood work. He was gushing with glee as his finger landed on the BUN and Creatinine figures. Nicky’s BUN had dropped by more than HALF and his Creatinine was now a high-NORMAL. In other words, Nicky’s chronic kidney disease was what? Gone? Is there such as thing as remission? I don't even have time to ask anyone about this because I wanted to share the news with all of you right away. This sort of thing doesn’t really happen. Once the kidneys go you can buy time, but that’s about it.

With the raw diet, the sub-q fluids and possibly that we are now giving Nicky RenAvast, (a nutritional supplement), his values are pretty much NORMAL.

Now THAT is a miracle.

Today's blood work-WOW.

I held back the tears as best I could. I looked over at Sam. He was doing the same thing. I asked if that meant we should back off on the fluids and Larry was adamant that we enjoy this moment and NOT mess with what is working for Nicky.

So no trip to the ER Vet. No spending our last dime on a beloved cat. Dr. Larry told us that maybe now we could have a Merry Christmas after all and I had to agree, for the first time in years, it was beginning to feel a lot like Christmas…and not a moment too soon.