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#61
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My condolences to you........
Linda |
#62
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Thanks for going through the details. My cat had steatitis when he was
about 10 or 11 months old. He was very active and playful and all of a sudden his activity level started dropping on a daily basis. He would move less and less. He had an alert and happy look, was eating and drinking as he always had, so I did not think it was something serious. It got to a point where he did not move at all, he would lay on the same spot all day long. He appeared happy, looked alert, was communicative, was still eating and drinking as if nothing, but he would not move. So I took him to the first vet. Vet was baffled with the symptoms. He had no fever, his heart was normal, vet did not notice anything wrong upon physical examination (at that time blood tests were not done routinely here). Vet wanted to give him steroids but I did not allow him to. Since I did not have a straight diagnosis, I did not want to mask the symptoms. So, no medication. Took him to another vet and he was equally baffled. I ended up going to 4 or 5 different vets in a month and nobody knew what he had - and I continued refusing any medication. That whole time he would not move but he looked normal in every other respect. At the time I had bought Earl Mindell's Vitamin Bible and was reading it and came across steatitis - he even mentions cats having steatitis because of being fed only tuna (the canned tuna for us humans). The symptoms matched but my cat was not fed tuna. But I decided to give him vitamin E anyway. He improved almost from night to day and in two weeks he was his old self again. Vitamin E was the only thing he got. He did not have any other symptom at all except the unwillingness to move. As I mentioned previously, his skin was normal and remained normal throughout that entire month he didn't move. Pain is a *must* symptom of steatitis. When you exercise in excess, you get muscle pain. That pain is caused by microscopic crystals of lactic acid. That pain can be so bad that we do not want to move. Now imagine having little blubber stones in and around your muscle tissue. It must be an excruciating pain. That's why animals with steatitis do not move and do not like being touched or forced to move. You say your cat did not appear to be in pain. That alone rules out steatitis. According to literature, the head and neck area are spared in steatitis - most likely because there are no fat deposits in those areas and Bubba's neck skin came out. You mention he had a hole in his belly right from the start. Is there any chance he had been bitten by a rat? Or cut himself while venturing outside? Or maybe bitten in a fight with another cat? These microbes are commonly found in soil so getting infected is easy if the immune system is debilitated. If he already had anemia, he was already debilitated when he got cut or bitten. You say he responded well to treatment but you did not give him only vitamin E. These organisms are bacteria so he probably responded well to antibiotics on one end, and steroids messed him up on the other end, which brought his overall condition to deteriorate quickly. Also what you say about the condition being limited to one area is in fact inconsistent with steatitis. You also say that after 2 or 3 weeks the fat pad was significantly smaller and softer. He probably had an inflammation in that area - a normal and *wanted* response to infection - and steroids made the inflammation go away (this also explains the "fat pad" becoming softer). Inflammation should *never* be inhibited unless you know for a fact you're dealing with an auto-immune disease (see below - btw, seems not many vets or docs know this - they prescribe steroids as if they were candy). You mention many times that there were no signs of infection. Inflammation is a sign of infection and not all infections cause pus or fever. To make a long story short, I am absolutely sure that was not steatitis. I believe it was some infection with some anaerobic bacteria or protozoan, maybe leprosy, maybe T. gondii (as posted earlier), maybe something else. Yet the only disease that I know of that causes the skin to literally break loose is leprosy. As I mentioned previously, these microorganisms are everywhere and any person or animal with a debilitated immune system is at risk. I wish your vet had sent a sample of his tissue for culture. Then you'd know exactly what it was. Anyway, again I am sorry for what you and Bubba went through and I know you did the best you could to help him. I also apologize for extending this discussion but it seems you are as eager to get answers as I am. The more we know, the better for our present and future pets. I hope a loving kitty makes way into your life soon. INFLAMMATION Inflammation is the body's reaction to an injury such as an invasion by an infectious agent. In just the same way as it is necessary to increase the blood supply to active muscles during exercise to provide glucose and oxygen so it is also necessary to direct elements of the immune system into sites of infection. Three major events occur during this response. 1. An increased blood supply to the infected area. 2. Increased capillary permeability caused by retraction of the endothelial cells. This permits larger molecules to traverse the endothelium than would ordinarily be capable of doing so and thus allows the soluble mediators of immunity to reach the site of infection. 3. Leucocytes, particularly neutrophil polymorphs and to a lesser extent macrophages, migrate out of the capillaries and into the surrounding tissue. Once in the tissue, they migrate towards the site of infection by a process known as chemotaxis. These events manifest themselves as inflammation. The immune system is not the only system which protects the body from injury; the clotting, fibrinolytic and kinin systems are also involved in mediating inflammation and in the resolution of tissue damage. These systems interact to maintain the integrity of the vascular system and to limit the spread of tissue damage whether it is caused by physical injury or infectious agents. Immunology, Ivan M. Roitt, Jonathan Brostoff, David K. Male. |
#63
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Thanks for going through the details. My cat had steatitis when he was
about 10 or 11 months old. He was very active and playful and all of a sudden his activity level started dropping on a daily basis. He would move less and less. He had an alert and happy look, was eating and drinking as he always had, so I did not think it was something serious. It got to a point where he did not move at all, he would lay on the same spot all day long. He appeared happy, looked alert, was communicative, was still eating and drinking as if nothing, but he would not move. So I took him to the first vet. Vet was baffled with the symptoms. He had no fever, his heart was normal, vet did not notice anything wrong upon physical examination (at that time blood tests were not done routinely here). Vet wanted to give him steroids but I did not allow him to. Since I did not have a straight diagnosis, I did not want to mask the symptoms. So, no medication. Took him to another vet and he was equally baffled. I ended up going to 4 or 5 different vets in a month and nobody knew what he had - and I continued refusing any medication. That whole time he would not move but he looked normal in every other respect. At the time I had bought Earl Mindell's Vitamin Bible and was reading it and came across steatitis - he even mentions cats having steatitis because of being fed only tuna (the canned tuna for us humans). The symptoms matched but my cat was not fed tuna. But I decided to give him vitamin E anyway. He improved almost from night to day and in two weeks he was his old self again. Vitamin E was the only thing he got. He did not have any other symptom at all except the unwillingness to move. As I mentioned previously, his skin was normal and remained normal throughout that entire month he didn't move. Pain is a *must* symptom of steatitis. When you exercise in excess, you get muscle pain. That pain is caused by microscopic crystals of lactic acid. That pain can be so bad that we do not want to move. Now imagine having little blubber stones in and around your muscle tissue. It must be an excruciating pain. That's why animals with steatitis do not move and do not like being touched or forced to move. You say your cat did not appear to be in pain. That alone rules out steatitis. According to literature, the head and neck area are spared in steatitis - most likely because there are no fat deposits in those areas and Bubba's neck skin came out. You mention he had a hole in his belly right from the start. Is there any chance he had been bitten by a rat? Or cut himself while venturing outside? Or maybe bitten in a fight with another cat? These microbes are commonly found in soil so getting infected is easy if the immune system is debilitated. If he already had anemia, he was already debilitated when he got cut or bitten. You say he responded well to treatment but you did not give him only vitamin E. These organisms are bacteria so he probably responded well to antibiotics on one end, and steroids messed him up on the other end, which brought his overall condition to deteriorate quickly. Also what you say about the condition being limited to one area is in fact inconsistent with steatitis. You also say that after 2 or 3 weeks the fat pad was significantly smaller and softer. He probably had an inflammation in that area - a normal and *wanted* response to infection - and steroids made the inflammation go away (this also explains the "fat pad" becoming softer). Inflammation should *never* be inhibited unless you know for a fact you're dealing with an auto-immune disease (see below - btw, seems not many vets or docs know this - they prescribe steroids as if they were candy). You mention many times that there were no signs of infection. Inflammation is a sign of infection and not all infections cause pus or fever. To make a long story short, I am absolutely sure that was not steatitis. I believe it was some infection with some anaerobic bacteria or protozoan, maybe leprosy, maybe T. gondii (as posted earlier), maybe something else. Yet the only disease that I know of that causes the skin to literally break loose is leprosy. As I mentioned previously, these microorganisms are everywhere and any person or animal with a debilitated immune system is at risk. I wish your vet had sent a sample of his tissue for culture. Then you'd know exactly what it was. Anyway, again I am sorry for what you and Bubba went through and I know you did the best you could to help him. I also apologize for extending this discussion but it seems you are as eager to get answers as I am. The more we know, the better for our present and future pets. I hope a loving kitty makes way into your life soon. INFLAMMATION Inflammation is the body's reaction to an injury such as an invasion by an infectious agent. In just the same way as it is necessary to increase the blood supply to active muscles during exercise to provide glucose and oxygen so it is also necessary to direct elements of the immune system into sites of infection. Three major events occur during this response. 1. An increased blood supply to the infected area. 2. Increased capillary permeability caused by retraction of the endothelial cells. This permits larger molecules to traverse the endothelium than would ordinarily be capable of doing so and thus allows the soluble mediators of immunity to reach the site of infection. 3. Leucocytes, particularly neutrophil polymorphs and to a lesser extent macrophages, migrate out of the capillaries and into the surrounding tissue. Once in the tissue, they migrate towards the site of infection by a process known as chemotaxis. These events manifest themselves as inflammation. The immune system is not the only system which protects the body from injury; the clotting, fibrinolytic and kinin systems are also involved in mediating inflammation and in the resolution of tissue damage. These systems interact to maintain the integrity of the vascular system and to limit the spread of tissue damage whether it is caused by physical injury or infectious agents. Immunology, Ivan M. Roitt, Jonathan Brostoff, David K. Male. |
#64
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Steve, you gotta see this site:
http://www.vetmed.ufl.edu/path/teach...ni.htm#Nodular Steatitis is only one of the possible causes of panniculitis. There's a picture there (warning: *very graphic*) that looks exactly like what you described. The picture is of a cat infected by a mycobacterium. |
#65
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Steve, you gotta see this site:
http://www.vetmed.ufl.edu/path/teach...ni.htm#Nodular Steatitis is only one of the possible causes of panniculitis. There's a picture there (warning: *very graphic*) that looks exactly like what you described. The picture is of a cat infected by a mycobacterium. |
#66
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Thank you Liz, I do appreciate your efforts to help me find the answers.
At this point, the only facts I have are that, when Bubba died, the fat tissue on his abdomen was gangrenous, he was acutely anemic and his skin was "paper thin", but there was no sign of kidney or liver disfunction. What I observed throughout was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, a disease process taking place within the fat tissue on his abdomen. He became noticeably lethargic on June 11. The next day he stayed in his box, not moving or accepting any form of nourishment. The exam on the 13th showed no bite marks, skin disorders or any kind of trauma. There was a yellow-brown discoloration of the fat tissue visible beneath the skin, and a single bloody effusion. He was somewhat anemic at that time, although I was never made aware of it. Since there was no biopsy I will never know that it was indeed steatitis. It could have been tissue death due to anemia from some other cause, or the anemia could have been caused by the tissue death, which might have resulted from steatitis. I didn't wait for the reticulocyte test, which would have shown if he was producing red blood cells or not. The skin tore off of his neck because it was so thin, which is a symptom of Cushings disease, which is, in turn, often associated with steroid usage. I can't say if it was the steroids or a genuine problem with his adrenal gland but, as buglady suggested, perhaps I don't want to know that right now. One other thing that I do know, however, is that he wouldn't eat without steroids, and lost over 4 pounds during the illness. At some point I will ask for more clues from the vets involved but, for now, I think I need to get on with life. I've realized that it's just not healthy for me to dwell on the causes too much right now - anger and guilt won't bring Bubba back. But again, thank you, and everyone, for your support and advice. Steve |
#67
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Thank you Liz, I do appreciate your efforts to help me find the answers.
At this point, the only facts I have are that, when Bubba died, the fat tissue on his abdomen was gangrenous, he was acutely anemic and his skin was "paper thin", but there was no sign of kidney or liver disfunction. What I observed throughout was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, a disease process taking place within the fat tissue on his abdomen. He became noticeably lethargic on June 11. The next day he stayed in his box, not moving or accepting any form of nourishment. The exam on the 13th showed no bite marks, skin disorders or any kind of trauma. There was a yellow-brown discoloration of the fat tissue visible beneath the skin, and a single bloody effusion. He was somewhat anemic at that time, although I was never made aware of it. Since there was no biopsy I will never know that it was indeed steatitis. It could have been tissue death due to anemia from some other cause, or the anemia could have been caused by the tissue death, which might have resulted from steatitis. I didn't wait for the reticulocyte test, which would have shown if he was producing red blood cells or not. The skin tore off of his neck because it was so thin, which is a symptom of Cushings disease, which is, in turn, often associated with steroid usage. I can't say if it was the steroids or a genuine problem with his adrenal gland but, as buglady suggested, perhaps I don't want to know that right now. One other thing that I do know, however, is that he wouldn't eat without steroids, and lost over 4 pounds during the illness. At some point I will ask for more clues from the vets involved but, for now, I think I need to get on with life. I've realized that it's just not healthy for me to dwell on the causes too much right now - anger and guilt won't bring Bubba back. But again, thank you, and everyone, for your support and advice. Steve |
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