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Meant to get to flight school for a solo this weekend. Didn't. Kamella had a medical emergency Friday night. Thank God, St. Francis, and Bast for MSPCA-Angell and their 24 hour emergency room, even if the doctors are thin on the ground after midnight on Saturdays.
Long story short: it wasn't a stroke, even if she was leaning to the left and had one pupil dilated, one narrowed. The doctor thinks it was either an ear infection (which was present) or a polyp pressing on nerves (which may be in there but she couldn't see for sure past the wax from the infection). Kamella is currently getting miconazole drops in her ears twice a day and eye ointment three times a day, as she's having trouble blinking due to facial nerve paralysis on that side. Her voice is normal and she's very, very interested in her treats and her dry food, although gooshyfood seems to be presenting her some issues at the moment, possibly because she's having trouble working her lips properly- I'm not really sure.
If you ever thought trimming a cat's nails when they didn't want them treated was hard, you're right, but I gotta say it's not nearly as hard in my admittedly limited experience as trying to follow instructions that say 'pull down lower eyelid and apply 1/4 of an inch of petroleum jelly'. I had a hard enough time dealing with oncoming fingers to my eye when they were mine and I was trying to learn to put in contact lenses. This poor cat...
The ears are not a picnic, either. Oddly, she puts up more of a fuss over drops in the non-affected side's ear. Not sure why. (The vet instructions say to do both ears, so I'm doing both ears, I'm just not putting as much effort into getting the full number of drops into the non-affected side.)
The doctor says the whole thing is almost certainly Horner's syndrome, but Horner's isn't a freestanding pathology. It's the term for symptoms of facial nerve paralysis that include one pupil becoming much more constricted than the other, a 'sunken' appearance to the affected eye, and blinking problems or failure on that side. In humans it's mostly caused by disease, including some real nasties, but can also be caused by- and this is pasted from the Wikipedia article- 'repeated, minor head trauma, such as being hit with a soccer ball.' For some reason I found that incredibly funny when I first read the article, although that may have been partly due to it being around three in the morning at that point. The wiki article has two photographs, one of a human with the weird pupils, one of a cat; the cat's eyes are doing exactly what Kamella's were.
Horner's apparently clears up in humans more often than not if the underlying pathology is adequately treated and the nerve recovers. Whether or not this is the case here, I don't know. If this is just infection badness, then the miconazole should clear up that part and relieve pressure on everything. If it's a polyp I'm going to have to take her to Angell again to have it removed, and do whatever ongoing treatment will be necessary after that.
*rubs face*
Only just now have I realized, looking at the calendar, that Saturday was her gotchaversary. *sigh* Poor girl. Good thing she doesn't perceive time or recurring events the way humans do.
Long story short: it wasn't a stroke, even if she was leaning to the left and had one pupil dilated, one narrowed. The doctor thinks it was either an ear infection (which was present) or a polyp pressing on nerves (which may be in there but she couldn't see for sure past the wax from the infection). Kamella is currently getting miconazole drops in her ears twice a day and eye ointment three times a day, as she's having trouble blinking due to facial nerve paralysis on that side. Her voice is normal and she's very, very interested in her treats and her dry food, although gooshyfood seems to be presenting her some issues at the moment, possibly because she's having trouble working her lips properly- I'm not really sure.
If you ever thought trimming a cat's nails when they didn't want them treated was hard, you're right, but I gotta say it's not nearly as hard in my admittedly limited experience as trying to follow instructions that say 'pull down lower eyelid and apply 1/4 of an inch of petroleum jelly'. I had a hard enough time dealing with oncoming fingers to my eye when they were mine and I was trying to learn to put in contact lenses. This poor cat...
The ears are not a picnic, either. Oddly, she puts up more of a fuss over drops in the non-affected side's ear. Not sure why. (The vet instructions say to do both ears, so I'm doing both ears, I'm just not putting as much effort into getting the full number of drops into the non-affected side.)
The doctor says the whole thing is almost certainly Horner's syndrome, but Horner's isn't a freestanding pathology. It's the term for symptoms of facial nerve paralysis that include one pupil becoming much more constricted than the other, a 'sunken' appearance to the affected eye, and blinking problems or failure on that side. In humans it's mostly caused by disease, including some real nasties, but can also be caused by- and this is pasted from the Wikipedia article- 'repeated, minor head trauma, such as being hit with a soccer ball.' For some reason I found that incredibly funny when I first read the article, although that may have been partly due to it being around three in the morning at that point. The wiki article has two photographs, one of a human with the weird pupils, one of a cat; the cat's eyes are doing exactly what Kamella's were.
Horner's apparently clears up in humans more often than not if the underlying pathology is adequately treated and the nerve recovers. Whether or not this is the case here, I don't know. If this is just infection badness, then the miconazole should clear up that part and relieve pressure on everything. If it's a polyp I'm going to have to take her to Angell again to have it removed, and do whatever ongoing treatment will be necessary after that.
*rubs face*
Only just now have I realized, looking at the calendar, that Saturday was her gotchaversary. *sigh* Poor girl. Good thing she doesn't perceive time or recurring events the way humans do.