Updates - one good, one not so good

It's been awhile since I gave an update on my aunt. I haven't heard from my grandmother or my uncle, so I was taking no news as good news. And what do you know, it was!

My aunt, who has been on death's door for several months now, is improving. It's hard to believe but it's true. My uncle emailed me last night to tell me that the latest test they did on her heart function was extremely positive. Her initial test readings when she was admitted to hospice was 8-15. Now she's at a 28-35. Normal is 50-70. No one knows quite how this happened, but we're not looking a gift horse in the mouth. She's being moved from hospice to a rehabilitation center for some type of therapy. She's not out of the woods yet by any means, but for the first time since January we're not waiting with bated breath to plan a funeral.

Do you guys believe in the power of meditation and positive thinking and energy? I know this might sound strange, but here goes. I started taking a new hot yoga class in January, and before we begin our session we sent an intention. It can be for ourselves or for someone else, sending our energy to them. I've concentrated on sending my energy to my aunt for months. And now this good news. Coincidence? Maybe. Maybe not. :-)

Now for the not so good update. Our little Chloe is not doing well. She's been fine since her diagnosis of renal failure in January. She's been taking her meds everyday and everything's been normal, until last week.

She's become extremely lethargic and doesn't want to eat or drink. She also keeps swallowing, which led me to believe she might have picked up a cold and has a sore throat and this has nothing to do with her kidneys. And that still might be true, we don't know yet. We're trying to get her into the vet today, if not definitely tomorrow.

She hasn't been interested in her regular cat food, so I fed her some tuna last night and she perked up and ate quite a bit of it. This morning, too, and she also drank quite a bit of water. And she was more alert this morning.

It just HAS to be a virus of some kind. It has to be. How she could suddenly go downhill overnight in relation to her kidneys just doesn't make sense to me. But needless to say, John and I are worried sick and we're preparing ourselves for the worst. We did a lot of crying last night, in no way ready to let our little girl go if the diagnosis is bad.

So please, if you have a minute today, send some positive thoughts and healing energy to our Chloe. We know she has many more years still with us.

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Update on Chloe

Thank you all so much for your good thoughts about Chloe this morning. I think it might have worked!

John just got back from the vet with our little girl and gave me a call. The vet (Dr. Carol) gave her a thorough exam and her eyes, ears, nose and throat and her temperature are all normal. Based on Chloe's symptoms Dr. Carol is not overly concerned that this is connected to her kidney disease, but she did take a blood and urine sample and we'll have the results tomorrow.

She thinks that Chloe is simply tired of the special food she needs to eat. See, before all this started both of our cats would eat any kind of cat food, so they had a big variety. Then Chloe was diagnosed with renal failure and she's had to eat the same kind of prescription food for about six months now. Dr. Carol said it was good for Mandy to eat it, too, since she's only a year younger than Chloe and it's a good preventative measure for Mandy.

So with two cats eating the same food from the same bowl, it's hard to tell who's eating how much. Apparently Chloe has hardly been eating these past few weeks and it's been Mandy cleaning out the bowl. So that's why Chloe has lost 2 lbs and is now lethargic because she's not eating and getting any nutrients.

Dr. Carol gave us two different brands of the same kind of prescription food from two different manufacturers and we're hoping that Chloe finds these more palatable and that we can switch back and forth between these three kinds, giving her a bit of variety.

I'm not going to rest easy until the test results come back tomorrow, but our vet is awesome and if she's not concerned Chloe's kidney disease has advanced then it's a big weight lifted from our shoulders.

Keep those good thoughts coming, though, guys, and I'll let you all know tomorrow what the test results are.

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