elfs | Dinah has Horner's Syndrome (Reply)

Dinah with Dysautonomia

For the past two days, Dinah has been showing signs of dysautonomia, dilation failure in her right eye. Her left eye responds to the light, her right does not. It's more than a little disconcerting. She's mostly blind in that eye, too; she reacts very little to motion toward it. Last night, she started wheezing badly whenever she purred.

We took her to the vet today. X-rays showed nothing, and she's lost a little weight, but that's normal for a very geriatric cat– she's 17, after all. The vet diagnosed it as Horner's syndrome, probably due to a nerve block, which in turn is probably due to her increasing blood pressure. There's not much we can do for her other than keep her comfortable, although we've been told to up her blood pressure meds up to twice a day.

She seems very comfortable otherwise. She whines when we pick her up, but she's happy to be petted and snuggled. She really hates it when we comb out the knots and pils on her belly, though, but it has to be done or she'll twist the knots and they'll start to hurt.