Sad news about our clinic cat Lilly

We all love our Lily.  Today she was scheduled for her dental cleaning.  Before putting her under anesthesia, we performed routing blood work as we do for all patients before anesthesia.  That blood worked showed some major changes.  Her hematocrit (packed cell volume-a measurement of red blood cells) turned out to be only 17%.  The normal range for a cat is 30-52.   The low number indicates anemia. 

Dr. Remick and the technicians reviewed slide of her blood under the microscope and discovered that her red blood cells are indeed very low and clumping together (agglutination). These factors led to a diagnosis of Autoimmune Disease.  The rest of the blood work all looked normal.

This shows how important it is to do blood work on our pets, even our seemingly healthy pets at least once a year.  Lily is our clinic cat, very healthy, no signs of illness at all.  She is only 6 years old and bounces around this places like a mad cougar.  We are so thankful we did the blood work and discovered her illness.  She has been started on cortisone as the primary treatment which will likely continue for the rest of her life. 

As for Lily and her teeth?  She had one tooth that troublesome that was cleaned since she was already sedated and we did the best we could with the rest of her teeth for now.  She will still need to have her teeth cleaned in the future, but that will wait until we are certain that she will be a good candidate for anesthesia.