Katharine's Vet Gives Me the Cause of Her Death

The necropsy doesn't offer a definitive cause of death. I posted the necropsy in the previous post.

And there are things not addressed. I'll have to call them Monday. But her vet read the report and said she died of (which is not listed as a cause in the report but she surmised the cause by the descriptions in the report:)

(DIC) "Disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) is a hematological syndrome characterized by the activation of intravascular coagulation resulting in excessive fibrin formation and simultaneous consumption of coagulation factors and platelets resulting in severe hemorrhaging."

She had too many clots (fibrin) in her blood vessels and organs, and especially in her lungs leading to blood loss and oxygen loss because nothing could circulate; this causes damage to all organs. This led to further organ failure including heart, lungs, liver, pancreas, kidneys. And even the thyroid showed inflammation responses to the process.

We knew she had mild CKD and her blood values had been high normal and stable TWO WEEKS before her seizure. Her cardiology report TWO WEEKS prior said that her heart disease HCM was moderate and stable from last September's checkup. Her liver and pancreas had made her sick in December, and we believe she had been getting sick since November. We had been hand feeding her all through December and January and she had seemed stable the week before she had her seizure.

Her vet believes the last seizure was caused by the underdiagnosed liver and pancreas disease (even though blood work TWO WEEKS before showed mildly elevated results and her ultrasound showed mild issues with both organs.) Apparently, severity of liver and pancreas disease cannot be accurately detected until they blow up, which is what happened after her seizure.

So, seizure caused the dominoes to fall; or the game of Jenga was being played internally and something became elevated/declined to function properly and caused her seizure which then increased the decline of her organs.

Her vet says that she was dying Saturday night/Sunday morning and that the reason she couldn't breathe wasn't because of the small amount of fluid in her lungs at death but because of the clots and lack of oxygen in her body that made breathing impossible.

I'm glad she was home when she died, that I had her bundled up in bed with me and my arm wrapped around her.

This is Katharine a few months ago, doing what she loved to do-climb up onto me, cuddle up against my head, then CHOMP DOWN on my hair.