Vet Saga

First, a little history on Annie and the vet.

Last February, we had a little problem, and accidentally folded Annie up in the sleeper sofa (and by "we", I mean "Ed"). During her struggle for freedom, she ripped one of her back nails completely from the nail bed. When in a couple of days it hadn't healed, we took her to the vet. While we were there we asked him to check her mouth because she'd had some awful breath, and her mouth was sore (she would cringe when you'd pet the side of her face).

Dr. Orenstein managed to get her mouth open, and it turns out that was a much bigger problem than the toe. She had two walnut-sized sores in the back of her mouth--nearly blocking her airway--and a mouthful of rotten teeth. Her CBC (a test for white blood cells) was showing a count of approximately 29,000 when average is 15,000-17,000. She went in for surgery in early March to have the teeth extracted (7 or 8, can't remember), and the abscesses removed. They also performed biopsies on the growths to make sure they weren't cancerous. At the time of that surgery, he said there were a few "suspect" teeth, but he was going to leave them and hope that they would heal. When the biopsies came back, it wasn't cancer, but a form of lymphocytic plasmacytic stomatitis, which is an autoimmune disease that attacks the teeth; there is some speculation that the cat develops an allergy to plaque. The funny side to all of this? He did nothing about the toe; it healed on it's own.

We brought her home, and her mouth healed amazingly fast (kudos to Dr. Orenstein). We noticed a marked improvement in her halitosis, and the most pleasant side effect was the return of her purr. We could hear her for the first time in years!

That was nine months ago, and recently we've been noticing the bad breath and the mouth tenderness. We took her back in last night, and a quick look inside revealed that the inflammation is back, and it's bad enough to cause her to bite the inside of her mouth, so there's a lot of blood too. Doc put her under a mild anesthesia to get a better look, and ten minutes later we were hit with the news that all of her teeth--minus canines--should be removed. Her white blood cell counts are elevated again to 25,000 (I think - it might be higher or lower - I didn't see the CBC sheet, so I'm running off heresy and memory), so they gave her an antibiotic injection, as well as home antibiotics. I have to take her back next week on Monday for another white blood cell check, and she's scheduled for the procedure the following week. She'll be down for about 3 hours while he pulls ten teeth and removes the inflammation. I struggled with the thought of having a cat that didn't have teeth, a condition that seems not very cat-like, but Doc says she'll be such a happy kitty when this is done, and Ed is reassuring the neurotic part of me that she won't even miss her teeth - she doesn't have the cognitive ability to miss them. I hope they're right, and that Annie remains the sweet, cuddly cat she's been, and that she'll no longer be in pain.

In preparation, we're going to start moving our cats from dry food out all day, to canned, prepared food in the morning and a little snack at night.