At least three times since the last dosage increase - which I thought was working well, silly me - Milk has had episodes where I found little wet spots under him. I couldn't figure out where they were coming from, although I was pretty sure they weren't urine. And I had also seen the "wake up from a sound sleep and attack the neck of one of the other cats" activity several times. Finally, at 4 AM this morning (Seizure #15 on 7/12/07), I put the pieces together.
Around midnight, he had jumped on Burble and bitten his neck. There didn't seem to be anything else notable going on then, though. During the night, he was asleep between my ankles. I woke up to the sound of his foaming, which seemed to have just started, and the beginning of the jaw snapping. There was no activity from the rest of his body, though. He just laid there, looking relaxed. I got a kleenex and wiped off his face and chest, and he made a minimal effort to avoid my hand, but he didn't get up or move away. He sort of stared into space for quite a while. And all of a sudden, it hit me. He was having a seizure - but it was different from the previous ones, maybe because of the amount of phenobarbital he's taking now. He didn't progress to the body jerking, or the pacing or meowing. Just to check my theory, I went out to the kitchen and put down a can of food for him, and sure enough, he sat there and ate the entire bowl - exactly what he did post-seizure before.
For the last week or so, he has had definite rear-leg weakness. Yesterday, he fell trying to jump onto the bathroom sink, which hasn't happened since the beginning of phenobarbital. His balance is off, and he's not very accurate about where he's putting his back feet; every trip across my desk or the couch is an adventure, because I never know if he's gonna end up on the floor or what. Thankfully, he's spending almost no time in the cat tree. His appetite is definitely improved, and he's developed a taste for baked/boiled chicken with his pill. (He will no longer eat the Pill Pocket on his own, though; I have to pill him.) Although my scale has said that he weighs 9.9 pounds (the dumb thing only goes up to .9 for the ounces, so I don't know what that weight actually is) for almost two months, he's really back to the bag-of-bones feeling again. That big bone in his chest is huge and pretty much totally unpadded. I was feeling hopeful because, even with the increased dosage, he's cuddling with the other cats again. It had crossed my mind to ask the vet if, when I went to pick up Scruffy yesterday after his dental, I could bring Milk in to have bloodwork done to see what his phenobarb levels are. I was glad I hadn't done it when we got into the huge rainstorms, but I guess it should be a priority.
I wish there was a neurologist closer than hours from here. I just don't know if I can realistically consider $1300 for an MRI. I'm thinking that maybe it would be worth doing the "video neurology consult", although that's not gonna show if there's anything going on inside his brain. I don't know what to do. I feel like I'm not taking adequate care of him, and now I'm scared if he's having even these "mini-seizures" more often. Is each one doing more damage? How much more doped up is he going to have to be? How come this is happening?
