Itsy-bitsy Mitzi-witzi

I know I have kept you waiting far too long for a Mitzi update. You all have probably been worried sick! Queen Mitzi (pictured at left in her ICU digs) is doing alright. She's slowly recovering. They finally discharged her last Friday, so she's been home with me for a week now. I've been working from home as much as possible so that I can keep an eye on her.

They still don't really know what's wrong with her. They’ve done a lot of research and found that the closest thing to what she has is a human disease called Cerebral Salt Wasting Disease. However, I don’t think that that diagnosis is much help since it’s basically just a description of the symptoms. It happens when some trauma to the brain causes a lesion in the area that regulates salt metabolism, causing your body to just pee out all of your salt. Since salt is an important regulatory electrolyte for a lot of cellular processes, that results in lots of other problems. This disease has never been reported in a cat before. Mitzi will be famous; they're writing up at least one case study about her! I asked the veterinarians to give me a reprint of any publications since I'm pretty sure searching webofscience for "Mitzi" won't turn up the correct results :).

However, the diagnosis still doesn’t explain what caused the brain thing (and the seizures) in the first place, and they still aren’t sure what that really is. They’ll probably do a follow up MRI in a few weeks to get a better sense of it. (I got to see Mitzi's MRI the other week. Cat brains are weird looking!) If it’s getting better, it was probably a hemorrhage or a stroke or something; if worse, a cancer. Based on the first MRI, they don't think it's a cancer, but it doesn't look much like anything typical, so they just aren't sure.

I think that it’s just luck that Mitzi’s the first feline case of Cerebral Salt Wasting Disease. I’m sure that other cats have had it, but my impression is that it and seizures are so serious that most affected animals die before they get the care they need. Mitzi’s really lucky that my roommate was home and that he rushed her to the hospital. And she’s lucky that she’s being treated at UCD, which has one of the best vet programs in the country. I doubt that many other places would have a neurology department to pin this thing down or such a dedicated ICU to keep a very close eye on her and pump her full of salt. She's also lucky that I'm such a rich grad student to be able to pay her medical expenses! :D

It's really great to have Mitzi back home with me, but I worry even more about her now than I did when she was in the hospital. At least the people there knew what they were doing! But now I'm responsible for her care, which is a little bit more involved now than simply feeding her and cleaning out the litter box. I have to give her half a pill of phenobarbital twice a day for her seizures for the rest of her life. As you might recall, pilling a cat, and pilling Mitzi in particular, is not easy. Even with the pill gun, it's been taking me several tries to get it down. I keep getting bitten! And it's only getting harder as Mitzi continues to recover and get stronger. Even worse is that I have to give her 50mL of subcutaneous fluids twice a day. Yikes!

And on top of all that, I'm especially neurotic about her eating. She lost a pound during her hospital stay and is very skinny now. A pound might not sound like much, but bear in mind that she only weighed 6lb to start with! Me losing 20lb in less than 2 weeks would be analogous to her weight loss. Though not even when you consider that she was skinnier than me to start with. I'd have to weigh about 100lb and then lose 17lb in 2 weeks. Just imagine that kind of emaciation! Fortunately, one of the side effects of the phenobarbital is increased appetite, so she's been eating pretty well, for the most part. Just look at her taking a nap next to her food bowls! She's so spoiled...