Foster Cat Journal: The Unbearable Heaviness of Being

I got a call from Dr. Larry with Cara's blood test results. She has a high white blood cell count and elevated eosinophils, which is a type of white blood cell. This is indicative of an infection, but it could also show an infection is resolving itself since she's been on LOTS of de-worming meds as well as antibiotics. We'd have to repeat the blood work to see what direction the numbers are tracking to know for sure. All I know is there is NO WAY we are giving Cara any more medications right now.

What's next? Stay the course. See if she can keep the baby food down. Today she ate 3 full jars of chicken baby food. That's the most she's eaten for a long time. No vomiting for about 36 hours. This is good, but not good. The real test is when I start to mix in some balanced canned cat food to see if she can tolerate something richer in texture and content.

What I need to prepare for is what happens if Cara can't keep her food down? Options include a Feline Barium Swallow Fluoroscopy, which is basically a long way to say: Dynamic X-Ray. They feed Cara radioactive Barium, then watch the contents move down into her stomach AS it happens. This is non-invasive and could possibly show that Cara does have a PRAA. There are only two or three places in the area that can do this evaluation. One is Tuft's. Just the name, alone, puts fear in my heart. If I thought Bob's chemo was expensive, this will pale in comparison. I don't even want to know what it's going to cost.

If that doesn't work, then we knock Cara out and 'scope her and possibly take some samples of her esophagus tissue...and after that, to correct this problem is surgery.

I can only hope there is a million- or billionaire reading this blog because I can't afford this level of care for Cara. I was trying to buy some time so I could get our Kitten Associates fundraising going and build up a reserve to cover things like this, but time is up.

I'm not going to make any decisions right now-not until we see how Cara does. I just heard another rescue group in the area has a kitten with the same symptoms and their Vet can't make a diagnosis, so the group was going to euthanize the kitten! I was really stunned to hear this, but thankfully, someone stepped up and took the sickly kitten and is still trying to find a way to help this kitten, too. One of my friends let them know about PRAA and they did NOT know about it so hopefully this kitten will get a second chance to live a healthy life if she has PRAA, too.

Lastly, I need to make a comment about my post yesterday. I know there are some very hurt feelings about what I wrote and I'm not at liberty to go into details out of respect for the people involved. Bottom line is Cara's health problems have really gotten to me and this year has been the worst, ever and it's barely started. I've had a crippling headache since the car accident last year and I am in chronic pain. Yesterday, I really felt ganged up on and it was the straw the broke the camel's back. I could have handled it better, but being human, I am prone to making errors. I can't go back and erase my words, but I can say that I'm sorry to those who may have been upset and that moving forward, I hope we can still be on friendly terms. Is apologizing going to fix everything? No. It's a start, at least.

I don't like to talk about myself because I know everyone out there is having a bad time, but things just never seem to get better for me. I feel like I'm slowly slipping, failing miserably and just not having the success I have been working so hard for for a long time now. Are things ever going to get better?

I'm not asking for a pity party. I know I just need to stick with it. Not give up. It will be okay, whatever it is...it will. Right now, though, I feel like a ton of bricks is weighing heavily on my heart.