Thank you so much for the well wishes, they are appreciated.
Growler: We did manage to get one of the episodes on video camera. I've had the camera out for days but hadn't been able to catch one--every time I looked away or didn't have it with me, or had to change the battery, it would happen, and by the time I got to the camera it had passed. Isn't that always the way. But my husband did manage to get the tail end (pardon the pun) of one episode on camera, and we showed it to the vet this morning. He didn't seem to find it very helpful, though, because he said that seizures sometimes mimic other things...ugh, I can't even remember his exact wording, but he didn't seem convinced that it was neurological, if only because the rest of her neuro exam was normal (see below).
Thanks for the hugs...I will certainly pass them on to Little Beade when she wakes up.
Sugar: Her appetite I think has been normal, perhaps a tiny bit increased (?), and she's on steroids which could cause increased appetite. But she's eating as normally as ever and using the litter box normally too. She's definitely been thirstier but that definitely correlated with the steroids, and she started drinking more after the first injection. She has lost some weight, about 0.5 kg, since the whole thing began, but some of that was almost certainly fluid which had built up around her abdomen, and we also changed her to a lower calorie food, as the vet felt she needed to shed a little weight (she went from 5.5 kg to 5.1 kg in a month on the diet food and we stopped giving her cat treats). I think the weight loss is probably normal and not indicative of any pathology considering the steps we took, and her coat is healthy and shiny, eyes bright, etc.
As far as the blood work, the first vet that took the blood apparently didn't put the information in her chart. We found that out this morning when we went to take her for the scan, I asked the new vet what bloods were taken and he said the paperwork wasn't in her chart.
(That stupid woman vet. I get madder and madder every time I think about her. You diagnose a cat with heart failure and you don't put her blood work in the chart??? GAH.) So I'm not entirely sure what blood was taken but I seem to recall kidney and liver functions being part of it, and I asked him this morning about possible hyper or hypoglycemia and whether a glucose was taken and he said it probably was, but frankly I don't trust that woman as far as I'd like to throw her. I've asked him to do a blood glucose or hemoglobin A1c to determine whether her blood sugar may be part of this, a she hasn't had a single episode this morning and has looked great, bright eyed and bushy tailed, even going so far as to sit on our laps and come up for a morning snuggle before we had to take her in.
I hate that we had to do that. But I'm wondering if the episodes are somehow connected to food, whether it's the food itself or the act of eating, because it was just too weird that she was fine this morning after having episodes all day and evening yesterday (and feeding throughout the day). I'm not sure how that would connect, or even if it does, but at this point I'm really grasping at straws.
As far as going to a specialist, the problem is were not sure exactly what route to take. If it's cardiac in nature (which we're hoping to rule in or out today with this scan and xray), then we'll at least have something to go on; if it isn't, we're kind of in a bind because she shows no other neurological issues on exam. It's just these episodes that come and go quickly, but otherwise she has no other neurological findings.
Patti- Thank you.
Yes, it has been incredibly stressful, but I just want her to be okay...it's so unlike her to look so scared and unsure. She's always been a cool kitty, never afraid o'nothin, as I tell her all the time...she's been with me since 8 months, and I traveled with her early so she wouldn't be afraid of the car or the carrier; she endured a plane trip from the US to the UK when we moved three years ago, had to go on the plane for a day and a half without me or my husband around her (this after only having been on a plane once when she was about 3 and she was in the seat with me on the flight). I worried myself into a panic, afraid she would think I'd abandoned her! When we went to pick her up at Heathrow, after our own plane landing in Birmingham (we had to drive across the country to get her), the attendant handed her to us and she just sat in the carrier, looking at her tearful mommy, calmly sitting there as if to say, "well where the bleep have YOU been?" We got her in the car, she stepped out of the carrier and sat on my lap purring all the way home. When she got to her new home she sniffed around the flat for about five minutes and then plunked herself onto the chair in the living room and went to sleep, happy as a clam. So this is one tough, cool cat. And she's never been sick, not once...in fact, I just found out (when she had the first xray) that she has been shot with a BB gun at some point in her life! I think it was when I was living in Illinois in a crummy part of town, there were cats being shot at by some kids in the neighborhood, and one of my neighbors' cats was hit as well, which is how I even knew it was happening. But I couldn't tell you when it happened because Beade never showed a single sign of being hurt. The BB was lodged in the fat in her side according to the xray. If I hadn't been so freaked out by what was going on at the time (her asthma attack) I would have flown back to Illinois and hunted those kids down. But my point is, she's quite unflappable and very even tempered, so to see her so rattled by these events, and all the vet visits she's had in the last month, has been so difficult. Having to withhold food from her this morning before the sedation was hard enough! My poor baby. She doesn't deserve this.
Thanks for all your encouragement. I'm looking for any similar experiences that anyone might have had, no matter how dissimilar it may seem at first glance...at this point we'll take anything because nothing seems to fit.