In the last post, I shared about what FIP is and how my cats got diagnosed. In this video, I share the surreal story of finding treatment, and actually treating my cats. Myself. Well, my husband and me. But ourselves. With syringes. If you haven’t watched that video, click the top of this video in the little video suggestion that popped up (you see it?) pause this one, and go watch that one first. The rest of this video will make much more sense. If you can’t find it, there’s a link to the first video in the description below.
Finding Treatment for FIP
After Emma’s diagnosis of FIP, the vet told me there was no hope. I stewed for a day. But then I swung into action and started looking for all the ways I might be able to save her. SURELY there was something on the internet, right? RIGHT?
In late December 2021, I found the first glimmer of hope. I discovered through Google searches there was an FIP Warriors group (now I belong to one called FIP Global Cats) on Facebook. I saw something about “black market drugs” and said, ya know, I want no part of that. But then my sister-in-law told me she looked into it, and that these groups were legitimate!
I found out that FIP was no longer terminal for cats, but treatment had to begin quickly after diagnosis as FIP cats can and do often “crash.” The Global Cats Group was (and is!) a group of worldwide volunteers who coordinate and procure a lifesaving treatment for cats with FIP.
There was a catch: this miracle medicine was not licensed for use in the US (though it is in other countries) in late 2021 when I started treatment. As of mid-2024, it is still not licensed but is becoming more available in the US.
The treatment
My husband and I would have to be the ones to administer a minimum of 84 days of injections. We could not rely on our vet because they are not allowed to use unlicensed treatment in their practice. However, vets CAN and do provide supportive treatment. If you have a vet who will not help due to fear of losing their license, you can let them know they just need to monitor bloodwork, and administer supportive medicine, such as IV fluids or vitamin B-12, among other things depending on the cat’s needs.
The treatment is called GS-441524. Dr. Neils Pedersen out of UC-Davis discovered that the drug (GS for short) could cure cats of FIP nearly 95% of the time, depending on the type of FIP and the cat owner’s ability to administer treatment effectively. He runs the website, sockfip.org and you can find a LOT of information about FIP there. The GS is essentially Remdesivir, the antiviral drug used to treat human coronavirus. It has one less phosphate group. Due to its unlicensed nature, it was not cheap, but I didn’t hesitate. I was determined to save Emma.
As of 2024, the costs of treatment are going down as more and more people treat their cats.
Starting Treatment
I joined the Facebook Group and connected with admins who were assigned to my case. They asked me to submit Emma’s bloodwork when I first joined. My admins were the ones who understood what to look for. I am not an admin and have not been through training. However, I do know that there are several things to look for on a cat’s bloodwork (and it varies by cat, remember) – cats will have different bloodwork signs, with each cat having some, all or few.
You’re looking at chronic uveitis and/or neurologic signs like my Emma, and also…
- high serum proteins,
- hyperglobulinemia
- and hypoalbuminemia,
- An albumin/globulin ratio of < 0.6
- fluctuating antibiotic unresponsive fever,
- leukocytosis,
- anemia
Between my two cats, Emma had leukocytosis (extremely high white blood cell count – 44K), anemia, but a normal albumin/globulin ratio and normal levels of blood proteins. Elsa had high blood serum proteins, hyperglobulinemia (extremely high globulins), a low albumin/globulin ratio (0.5), a high unresponsive fever, and anemia.
I met someone locally to help me get started on my first vials of the GS. It was a surreal experience. She gave me some syringes to get started along with an unmarked vial of GS. I had to watch YouTube videos to learn how to inject cats with the GS medicine, what kind of needles to purchase, how to draw the GS out of the vial and change needles to inject.
We began the first of 115 days of treatment. Four days in, Emma’s eye started to clear up, she had more energy, and seemed to be feeling better.
Challenges During Treatment
It would take longer for Emma’s legs to come back to where she wasn’t dragging them. The FIP group kept saying she’d walk again, and I was cautiously hopeful. By day 6 of treatment, her legs were working a little better already. By day 12 she was wobbling a lot and taking a few steps at a time. I could tell she was quickly regaining strength. She loved to go outside for just a few minutes a day to get a little sunshine and stretch her legs. On day 15 of treatment, she experienced her first snow and gingerly stepped and played in it.
We had some setbacks, however. Along the way, due to her incontinence, Emma would develop two UTIs during the first month of treatment, and a kidney infection on day 63 of her treatment. This required antibiotics on these occasions, emergency vet visits. She would also develop two more UTIs: one toward the end of treatment and one during her observation period. We were in the throes of trying to figure out how to deal with her incontinence.
In addition to providing treatment, we took Emma to the vet to monitor her bloodwork every 30 days.
On day 33, she hopped over to my desk for the first time since early December. She was particularly proud of herself. On Day 39, her legs started regressing. It required a change in her medicine along with an increase in dosage.
Emma continued to fight like a legend through it all. She would often hang out with her sister Elsa watching birds in the window. And then find her sister Ellie to nap together.
The minimum treatment time is 84 days. On day 82 of treatment, (show Rainbow pic of Emma) we took Emma to the vet for what we hoped would be the final bloodwork that she’d need before concluding treatment and moving into the observation period, which would last another 84 days. The observation period is so that you can make sure the GS really cured them and that they don’t relapse.
Alas, a side effect of the injections are what are called injection sores. Remember: the GS is acidic. It goes just under the skin. That acidity can cause sores to develop. Emma developed a total of 11 of them over the course of treatment and those had triggered an immune system response due to a couple of them getting infected. Despite taking great care in treating her sores, they got big and deep quickly. That meant we had to extend treatment.
Extended Treatment Day 100
You’d think this would be celebrated as a “milestone” kind of day. It was and it wasn’t.
Treatment had been extended and wasn’t easy. Thankfully we were able to switch orally-administered pills instead of an injectible treatment to help her sores heal. There is some risk of these not being absorbed properly in the intestine, which is why we waited so long to switch. Emma was to swallow 7 pills in the morning and 7 pills in the evening. That was also why we waited to switch.
Elsa Develops FIP
Apart from Emma, we’d noticed Elsa starting to lose weight. Then she stopped eating. It happened over just a few days. But on treatment day 100 for Emma, Elsa would hardly move, would not eat, and barely seemed alive.
A vet visit confirmed that Elsa now also had developed FIP. It is said that there is a genetic component to siblings developing the disease. Emma was especially tender with her sister Elsa that day. I think she knew.
So on Day 100 with Emma, we started at Day 1 with Elsa. The sense of overwhelm and the financial implications had me in a panic. The expense of it was for real, y’all. We would have fundraised because expenses easily surpassed the $10K mark, but between treating the two cats, syringe feeding and giving IV fluids, expressing Emma and dosing her with 14 pills each day, working full time and not going insane, we just didn’t have the energy. We got creative and took out loans, used credit cards, used savings.
We buckled down and focused on the first thing we had to do, despite our heads swirling with everything to think about: we just had to give Elsa her first shot. That first week, she was on a smaller dose than Emma, but had a high fever as she started treatment. Elsa seemed to get better for a few days. But then on Day 7 of treatment, she became extremely weak and lethargic again. We weren’t sure if she would make it through the night.
But Elsa’s a fighter. We began syringe-feeding her small portions of diluted chicken baby food. She would eat nothing else. We also began to give her injections of the GS twice a day – in the morning and evening. There was an immediate positive effect. She began feeling better and by Day 10 she was a lot more alert and wanted to go outside for a supervised visit to our backyard.
From all the shots, Elsa developed her first injection sores quickly: by day 14 of treatment. By Day 18, she had two more sores. These would present a challenge, both to keep clean and to keep her immune system from becoming too activated by the presence of open sores as it fended off the deadly FIP virus with the help of the GS. By day 25, she had 7 total open sores. We had to make the switch to the oral pills to hopefully let her skin heal. Elsa was stable enough: she didn’t have loose stools and had a lot of energy.
At her first 30-day bloodwork appointment, Elsa’s bloodwork was starting to return to closer to normal. Her globulins weren’t off the charts. Around Day 45, we noticed a change in her personality: she was happy, affectionate, social – qualities she had never exhibited before. Ever. We had no idea she, too, had been battling FIP well before we ever had any idea – as is the case with many FIP cats. She also went from being extremely picky so absolutely LOVING food.
After FIP
Emma was considered cured on June 27, 2022 after 115 days of treatment and 84 days of observation. Elsa was considered cured on October 7, 2022 after 129 days of treatment and 84 days of observation. Elsa, thankfully has no residual effects from FIP. She made a 100% recovery.
Emma unfortunately does. Because she had ocular/neuro FIP, she developed scarring on her spinal cord, which still remains. She is still incontinent as of mid-2024. We express her 3-4 times per day and pick up poo that falls out. Is it ideal? Of course not. But we love her all the same.
We hope that, like her eyesight and her leg mobility, that eventually these final two systems will come online. We have tried laser therapy, at home light therapy, lion’s mane mushroom, and may try acupuncture in the future.
In the meantime, we manage her care with urinary care food, and urinary care supplements.
Why Save these cats when there are so many other issues in the world?
Quite a few people have asked me, “wow. That’s a lot. They’re ‘just cats’.” Let me just say that to me, they are not “just cats.” They provide unconditional love and companionship. There is no price on that.
We all have a role to play in the world, right? Some of us can make a difference in people’s lives by actually saving beloved animals and helping others to do so. Furthermore, humans have summarily caught, abused, tortured and eradicated so many animals from the planet.
If I could, in my own small way, contribute to rectifying that wrong, I was going to do that.
Finally, this was bigger than me just saving my two cats. I helped, in a small way, pave the way to save hundreds of thousands of other cats, by contributing to the early costs of treatment that will eventually make it a common treatment that any cat owner can get at the vet for a fraction of the cost.
I spent a lot of money doing this, yes. I went into considerable debt to do it. I could have gone and done SO MANY other things. But I chose to save not one, but TWO lives. And in that way, it will ripple out and save many other lives over the long term. The love and bond I have with Emma and Elsa is unmatched to any other animal I have ever known in my lifetime.
Sources
https://www.sockfip.org/what-are-the-signs-of-fip/
my own experiences with FIP and treating my two cats
https://icatcare.org/advice/feline-infectious-peritonitis-fip/
https://vcahospitals.com/know-your-pet/feline-infectious-peritonitis
