My 17 year old cat was just diagnosed with hyperthyroid, last week, after taking her in for an exam due to weight loss and early morning dry/spit vomiting episodes. In addition to the thyroid thing, vet also mentioned that her liver enzymes were up, and suggested a couple of approaches.
Approach 1 - schedule liver ultrasound ($700) to understand what is happening there before putting her on meds.
Approach 2 - skip the liver diagnostics and put on meds, knowing it has side effects and may interfere w/ her appetite and possibly her liver.
Complication #1 is that my kitty has always been a pickier eater, though we’ve got her to the point that she’s eating wet food and my other cat’s hills z/d dry food, moistened.I think as a symptom of the thyroid issue she’s actually gotten better about eating, so not great.
Complication #2 is that my other cat (the exclusive hills z/d eater) is a freakshow when i bring the older cat back from the vet. Its days of stress on the both of them until they readjust. She’s got major ptsd from an extended hospital stay a few years back. i feel for her but she’s just awful when the other cat comes home smelling like the vet.
That said, we were on board with doing the liver ultrasound and are currently trying to get it scheduled (its a traveling service and basically waiting on them to schedule with our vet- guessing its going to take awhile like most veterinary things right now), but in the meantime I’ve been doing some reading (dang internet lol), and I guess there is some indication that hyperthyroid cats can have elevated liver enzyme issues and that is typically resolved by treating the thyroid. So now I am wondering if it even makes sense to jump to the ultrasound first - one because of the expense, but moreso because of the stress it puts on both cats.
At the same time, it sounds like there is some risk by giving the thyoid medication to a cat with liver problems.
I also read, and it wasn’t discussed with me, about the thyroid y/d food we could try. So now I am wondering if we try transitioning her to the y/d first, knowing Ms Picky may totally reject it and that we may be back to this medication vs liver situation.
I do have a call back in to my vet to discuss these options again and to have her answer these questions, but wanted to know if anyone here has had a similar issue with their hyperthyroid cat and the approach you took?