We were up to another 23 days since the last seizure when this morning's showed up. I'm always trying to find signs or symptoms that might indicate a seizure is imminent, but..... I think this one might have been a reflection of a failure of the "chunk system" of cat-medicating. I thought last night when I gave him his last pills that the 1/4 pill was kind of small, and the two 1/8 pills were not exactly "standard", either. But, that's not something that I can ever have control over, I guess, given the vagaries of chopping up the stupid pills. And maybe this one has been in the works for a couple of days - I did notice that for the last two days, I've had a hard time finding him for his 6:00 PM pills. But he's got that exquisite little internal clock, and I have no doubt that he knows exactly what time it is, and when pill time is. Anyway, I had trouble going to sleep last night, and was awake from 2AM to 4AM, and around 4:00, Milk got up from his usual position curled up between my knees and wandered off toward the sofa, where the four kitty pi's are still spread out. He's been snuggling again with Scruffy in his pi recently, so I figured that's where he was headed. At 6:30, I heard what seemed to be the end of a seizure. No snarling, but the foaming noise woke me, I guess. He was laying on his side, in one of the pi's, and he had another pi clutched between his front paws and his head was resting on the second one. His face and neck and side were soaked, as was the part of the pi where his head was. (No peeing, thank goodness. That's starting to become an obsession with me.) He was done with whatever physical stuff happened during the seizure, and was just laying calmly, jerking occasionally. To judge by the short amount of it I saw, it looked like a very mild seizure, but who knows. I talked to him and petted him, waiting for him to jump down and go look for food. It was at least a minute, possibly more, and when he jumped off the couch, he was really wobbly and almost collapsed. He bumped into the coffee table on his way to the kitchen, but by the time he got there, he was a little sturdier. He ate some of last night's dinner that was left while I fixed him a fresh can, and then eagerly ate it. He wandered around a while. I sat down in my chair to try to sleep some more because I had to take Scruffy to the vet in a couple hours, and Milk curled up and went to sleep again on my leg. He seemed fine when I woke him around 9:00 and gave him his pills early because I had to get ready to leave. He didn't eat much, and before I left, he had crawled under the couch. All the other cats were downstairs (where I had opened the sliding door in an dubious attempt to capture Scruffy), but Milk never came down. We've been back now for a little while - it's 1:00 PM, and there's no sign of Milk. Usually, he's sitting at the top of the steps when I come home.
While I was at the holistic vet's, (where I've taken Milk in the past for chiropractic stuff, which the animal communicator said he needed and Dr. K agreed) - I asked about acupuncture for his seizures. Dr. K was willing to do it, but said that it does require an "holistic exam" - $160- and a committment to follow-up appointments. I wondered how we would know if it was working or not, but I suppose the only way is that he wouldn't have any seizures. At any rate, I'm willing to try it. The medication route hasn't been vastly successful, and I think this is at least a possibility worth trying. They want Milk's records from Dr. G, and I gave them Dr. A's name and the clinic in Ohio, but they happened to have one of their referral sheets and his name wasn't on it - don't know what that means. At any rate, Milk has an appointment for November 5 at 10:00 AM. Not a wonderful time, since it takes almost an hour to get down there. I'll have to give him his pills at the doctor's office, I guess.
I get so discouraged every time he has another seizure. You get your hopes up, and then boom, it happens again. If it weren't for the subsequent anxiety about how many will follow and how severe and how close they'll be, it might all be easier to deal with. And if he didn't look so sad after a seizure - I guess the activity and the increased blood flow makes the pink parts of him so much pinker and more defined. It gives him a sort of haunting/haunted look, somehow - like he's outlined in blood or something. Or maybe I need to stay away from stores until Halloween's over........
One last further disturbing aspect after today's seizure - twelve hours later, I discovered that he still couldn't jump safely onto the bathroom sink, or the counter in the kitchen. He fell both times he tried. And when I gave him his 6:00 pills, he immediately threw them back up, with a small puddle of brownish liquid. I'm not sure what to think about either event.
