Cat recently diagnosed with advanced heart disease but I have questions!

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Ebony1996
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Cat recently diagnosed with advanced heart disease but I have questions!

Post by Ebony1996 »

Hello all, my lovely boy of 14 years old has recently been diagnosed with some sort of heart failure. He has fluid build up around his stomach and his breathing is a little harder but not terrible.

He is eating and drinking as usual, he is bright and alert yes sleeps a lot, but he always slept all the time anyways. He is walking a little awkward but still jumps around/gets around fine.

I’m having a lot of doubts as when I visited the vets they told me he has advanced heart failure and my two options were to give me medication or put him to sleep. They were very pushy with the putting him to sleep option and I’m confused by this option. I feel he has fight in him as he is eating, drinking and active as usual and I just want to give him the opportunity to fight for as long as he has left.

I heard of people getting medication for their cats for up to a year to help their cats heart failure. I was given ten days of medication to reduce the fluids in his stomach/ lungs. I just feel desperate and feel as though the vets have given him a death sentence already.

Maybe I’m over thinking it all but I don’t want I give up on him yet. Has anyone else here had experiencing with this and what is the best thing to do for my cat?

Thank you and sorry for the long post.
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Mollycat
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Re: Cat recently diagnosed with advanced heart disease but I have questions!

Post by Mollycat »

Welcome to CatChat and sorry for your difficult news.

It sounds like your vet is being at best insensitive and you're in shock at the diagnosis. Perhaps after the holidays a phone call when you're better prepared for all the facts that will help you decide on a course of action? And if you don't have trust and confidence in your vet, maybe a second opinion or even a change of vet? It's important to have the right vet for our animals but also for us, someone who is not only good medically and ethically but who is in tune with us as owner, care giver and decision maker, and knows how to talk to us. As an example when my first cat had to be put to sleep I rang the hospital who had said they would come out and they denied everything, then my own vet who was family who said if she was that bad she wouldn't know any different and to bring her down. I then spent our last afternoon together ringing around every vet in the book before finally finding one who agreed to help us, then took one look at my girl and said "Oh my you are a poorly pusscat! to reassure me I was doing the right thing. When my vet found out she asked who, and when I told her she sneered, "Oh, him!" - that's right, him, who helped us when my own family turned your back on us! Don't be afraid to find the right vet for you as well as your cat.

That said, heart failure doesn't get better, it can only at best be slowed down and the patient made more comfortable. There are many ways a heart can start to fail - a patient can be fine and normal one second and suddenly stop, or gradually get worse and struggle more and more, or have better days and worse days. But it's also possible to have a good quality of life for a good amount of time with a serious heart condition, it all depends. Once the shock of the diagnosis has calmed down, and you are able to take in and process the information, I would ask the vet for as much detail as you can and go from there.

Then you will need to ask yourself, if the prognosis really is very bleak, how you want to spend the time you have left together. Do you want it to be quality togetherness perhaps ending a little sooner, or endless rounds of hospitals and medications and tests and more pills? 14 is not old, but cats don't think in those terms, they only know if they feel well or unwell, and when they feel unwell and we run out of options to help them get well again, it becomes kinder and more loving to accept that the life in the years is worth more than the years in the life.
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Kay
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Re: Cat recently diagnosed with advanced heart disease but I have questions!

Post by Kay »

my 17 year old Tiffany had a failing heart, and eventually was full of fluid - it was drained off and for 48 hours she was fine, but then it all came back, so I knew it was the end for her, before her other organs started to fail - the vet came out to her and she went very peacefully

managing the end before a sudden crisis is not an easy decision but so much better than delaying until a beloved cat is suffering
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