And so I wasn't at all prepared to see Teddi looking so poorly when I got back. He's always been a big boy, and so I got a shock to see him looking so thin, and with such a scruffy coat, even though people had been looking after him and giving him his medication for his thyroid and kidneys. When I weighed him, I discovered that he had lost two kilos; that's a huge amount for a cat. (See top photo.) And I began to notice that he wasn't really eating, but was simply walking away and leaving his food in the bowl.
After a few days of this, I knew I had to take him to the vet. I seemed to have a cat who was starving himself to death and it was horrible to see him so poorly (see previous post, on 6th July, about diagnosis grief.) I prepared myself for blood test results that would show that either his thyroid or his kidneys had deteriorated… but no, what did show up on the blood tests was a new problem - a problem with his liver - and that's when we worked out what had probably happened.
One of the symptoms of hyperthyroidism, because it affects the hormones, is that the animal will become more "emotionally attached" and affectionate towards its significant others. After losing a lifelong feline companion (his mother, Tamba) before the summer, and then inexplicably losing his lifelong human companion (me) over the summer, it seems that Teddi finally got depressed and stopped eating normally. The house sitters, although they took good care of the cats, had no way of recognising that his behaviour was abnormal or that he was losing so much weight (a quarter of his body weight!) The sustained anorexia started to affect his liver, which tries to store fat when the body is losing weight (hepatic lipidosis) and, by the time I got him to the vet two weeks ago, she couldn't get him to swallow any food, even when forcing it into his mouth with a syringe.
I was told to give him daily fluids, antibiotics and phosphorous, and to force feed him to eat tiny spoonfuls of a special tinned food for urgent care. Time would tell if he'd recover well or if the starving was too prolonged and has irrevocably damaged his liver. Needless to say, I was feeling horribly guilty at having to give "critical care" to a cat who was diagnosed with possibly depression-induced liver disease.
This reminded me so much of how the enemy will always try to steal from us. I went to Africa because I believed it to be God's will for me this summer, and we all saw God do such amazing things though our ministry this year. It was horrible to come home and see Teddi looking so ill, but I knew I had to trust God with this situation, just the same as I had had to trust him with my own health challenges when travelling in Africa.
Little by little, I began coaxing Teddi to eat again, just a tiny mouthful at a time. I also had to give him antibiotics and minerals to help his liver. After a few days, he began to look less subdued, and gradually began to eat a little more again. Soon he was behaving more like his old self but, because he'd lost so much weight, and some mysterious bald patches were appearing on his head, the vet thought it might be best to do the hyperthyroid blood test again.
And this is where things get a little weird. When the results came back, Teddi's thyroid reading was far below what would be normal. A normal T4 reading is between 19 and 50. When Teddi was diagnosed in May, his thyroid reading was a horrendous 320… and this stabilised to a more normal 34 once he was on daily medication. Last week, the reading was only 6 - strangely and inexplicably low. The vet told me to stop his medication immediately and bring him back again this week for yet another blood test.
Despite the strange little bald patches on his head, and the fact that he's a lot thinner than usual, it really seemed to me that he was looking better from day to day, and that his coat was becoming fluffy and silky - more like it used to be be before the hyperthyroidism starting making it greasy this year. We did the blood test on Tuesday this week and the results came back today….
This time the reading was 30, which is well within the normal range for feline thyroid… and that's without giving him his daily medication. The vet is completely baffled; it's unheard of for hyperthyroidism to go into remission, and yet this cat appears to be suddenly and inexplicably "healed" of his thyroid condition. I did confess that I'd regularly laid hands on his little body and prayed for it to be strengthened and healed; other than that, there's no medical explanation for the sudden change in the blood test.
All the vet could say is that he seems to be fine (as far as the thyroid is concerned) and doesn't need to take any medication for now (except for his kidney supplement) …. but we should perhaps test him again in a month or six weeks, in case this is only a temporary remission. She says it's truly unprecedented for a cat's thyroid reading to normalise like that.
So we'll see. For now my boy gets a reprieve from his daily pills… and none of us have any explanation for what has happened. Perhaps we've experienced a feline medical miracle!
