alexist

I just spoke to the vet in Belsize Park. Her heart sounded normal, but they're going to do a full workup on her to be sure. They're also waiting on biopsy results as her leg muscle was very hard. She's comfortable, and will be discharged this evening if all goes well. The bad news is that her front left leg may be permanently paralysed :-(

Now I'm worried that we should have chased up the EKG last year when they found the murmur. She seemed fine so we didn't. I wonder if we could have prevented this? I feel so guilty :-(

Zoe's heart is enlarged, so it's not pumping blood as well as it should :-( Neil spoke to the vet, not me, so I don't know abotu the prognosis long term. She's coming home this evening with various drugs (we have to give her injections) and they need to see her again in a month.

Poor cat, I'm worried about her now :-( As you might be able to tell, I'm one of those bonkers pet owners who absolutely dotes on them. Heck, I paid $1,300 to bring her to Britain! (And now I'm worried about taking her back to America--will it be safe for her to fly? You can bring pets back on the QM2, but that's a little pricey since we'd have to go with her!)

She had an embolism of some type (I'm sure the words embolism and thrombosis were in there... you'd think I'd be able to recognise the terms after my years of medical-drama watching!)--basically a clot broke free and lodged near her shoulder.

The prognosis for her leg is poor--it's likely to stay paralysed, but as it's a front leg, this isn't too bad; I've seen many 3 legged animals who did just fine. Her overall outlook is better--we need to make sure she doesn't have a 2nd embolism, as that has a good chance of being crippling or fatal. So, weight loss and anticoagulant injections from now on. She'll see the regular vet again in a week, and the cardiologist in a few weeks when she's in (the cardiologist comes in once a month).

She's much more alert and is hopping around. She can move the leg a bit, but not walk on it.

The bill, by the way, was £1,200.

ETA: OK, a thrombosis is a clot that forms in a blood vessel, while an embolism is one that forms elsewhere and travels, so this was the latter and either he didn't mention a thrombosis at all or I mis-heard him (he's French, so it's possible). He's also looking into another anticoagulant so we don't have to give her injections twice a day. She's quite good with the shots but they are troublesome.

I also found a page on feline cardiomyopathy, which sounds like what Zoe has, and the information was depressing. By the time an embolism occurs, the heart muscle has sustained damage, and it can't be reversed. Congestive heart failure is a frequent outcome :-( Still, she's got beta-blockers and anticoagulants, and then again, plenty of people live a long time after being diagnosed with heart disease. She's not even 6 years old, so this is really sad :-(

Zoe has hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (I now know the proper title because her pills have "for treatment of feline primary hypertrophic cardiomyopathy" on the carton).

Today's Guardian Wellbeing feature was on cardiomyopathy. In humans, of course. Still...