Furball had his ultrasound today. He has polycystic kidney disease, common in Persians I've learned in the past few days. The ultrasound showed that both of his kidneys are affected. The left one is very enlarged and has a massive cyst on it, which they can't do anything about. They gave me the things I needed to start him on sub-q once a day, 100. They gave him a Procrit shot for anemia, and gave me two more needles to give him the shots myself this week. We will take him back one week from today for another round of blood work to see how those numbers look.

So it looks like we can do what we can to make him happy, and keep him feeling good. Everyone says how you know when they are done fighting and when they want to die. I hope so, because I would hate to see him suffer. They really didn't give me any sort of a timeline, just said that some don't make it more than a couple of months, while others last for a couple of years. I'm praying for as much time as possible.

The only other thing that I am aware of to consider would be a kidney transplant. The nearest university with those capabilities would be somewhere in Wisconsin (we live 3 hours south of Chicago). Has anyone had any experience with transplants? It looked like they had an 80-90% success rate. It could give him a normal healthy life for a lot longer than he would otherwise live. If you have any information on this (good or bad), I would like to hear it.

Thanks again for your kindness.

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