Thankful Thursday

Hi everyone, we are joining Brian today in the Thankful Thursday blog hop.

Some of you on Facebook may remember me mentioning that I had some good news to share with you about Lita.  So, here it is!

Dare I say we have found a combination of medications that actually helps Lita's asthma significantly?!

If you are new here, Milita has struggled very much with severe asthma for the past several months.  In March, she began to have many asthma attacks.  Her x-rays revealed fluid in her chest, and her lungs looked so bad that our vet thought Lita might have heart failure.  I rushed her to a cardiologist, thanks to many donations for an emergency ultrasound of her heart.  Thankfully, she did NOT have heart failure, but her asthma continued to be a very serious issue.

In the past few months, we feared Lita may have contracted pneumonia.  She was having asthma attacks nearly everyday, and I was often scared to leave her home alone if I needed to run errands or go to my own doctor's appointments.

After trying Lita on Zithromax for a month with no improvement in her coughing, I suggested that we try Doxycycline for her because it seemed to help her coughing back in March when the cardiologist gave her a two-week supply.




After being on Doxycycline for three weeks, I noticed that Lita's coughing and asthma attacks were calming down.  She started having days where she did NOT have any asthma attacks!

Then THIS happened:
LITA DIDN'T HAVE AN ASTHMA ATTACK FOR NEARLY A WEEK!!!!!

I see this as nothing short of a minor miracle seeing as how poorly she was doing before.

So........the vet and I have talked, and we are going to try what the cardiologist said might help her back in March.  That is, to keep Lita on a chronic, low dose of Doxycycline for good.

She is on:
Prednisolone 2.5mg.
Doxycycline - a low dose, twice a day.
Flovent - 125 twice a day.

This seems to be working.  

So, if you have a chronically ill cat, don't give up!  It might take a lot of trial-and-error, like it did for us, but you may just find that one medication or combination of things that helps your kitty.

We are very thankful that this regimen seems to be helping Lita and hope it continues to do so.

By the way, Carmine and Lita both went to the vet yesterday.  I will have updates on both of them coming very soon.