Moaning Myrtle's FIP Fight Continues: Episode 2 - Exclusive Pet Parent Interview
Episode 2 of Moaning Myrtle's FIP chronicles unfolds as we sit down with her loving pet parents to discuss their ongoing fight against the disease. With candor and courage, they share their experiences navigating through the complexities of FIP and their involvement in a pioneering clinical trial. From the initial uncertainty to the beacon of hope provided by experimental treatments, this episode offers a poignant glimpse into the resilience of a family determined to defy the odds and rewrite Myrtle's story with triumph and hope.
What You’ll Learn:
Gain insights into Moaning Myrtle's FIP journey from the perspective of her dedicated pet parents
Understand the emotional and logistical challenges faced by families dealing with a pet diagnosed with FIP
Learn about the latest advancements in FIP treatment, including the promising clinical trial that Moaning Myrtle is participating in
Discover the impact of experimental treatments on Myrtle's quality of life and prognosis
Hear firsthand accounts of the highs and lows experienced by pet parents involved in a clinical trial, including the hopes and uncertainties that come with it
Gain a deeper understanding of the resilience and love shared between pets and their families in the face of adversity
Ideas Worth Sharing:
"So, Dr. Petra was wonderful. Obviously, she's a very busy woman. She had appointments all day already. And she was amazing enough to be able to fit her into her busy schedule." - Dr. Tori St. Cin
"It feels good to be part of a medical trial that's gonna hopefully really advance what we can do for this previously untreatable, fatal disease."
- Dr. Tori St. Cin
Resources From This Episode:
Colorado State University FIP Clinical Trial
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Read The Transcript:
Dr. Sugerman: [00:00:00] Hi, and welcome to Vetsplanation. I'm your veterinary host, Dr. Sugerman, and I'm going to teach you about veterinary medicine. In this podcast, we can dive deeper into the understanding of what our pets are going through and break down medical terms into easier to understand chunks of information. Just a quick disclaimer, this podcast is for informational purposes only.
Dr. Sugerman: This is not meant to be a diagnosis for your pet. If you have questions about diagnostics or treatment options, please talk to your veterinarian about those things. Remember, we are all practicing veterinary medicine and medicine is not an exact science. Your veterinarian may have different treatment options and different opinions.
Dr. Sugerman: The information I provide here is to help pet parents have a better understanding about their pets. If you like our podcast, please consider sharing this podcast with at least one friend or just somebody else who has pets as well. Now, let's jump into this week's episode.
Dr. Sugerman: All right, everybody. Welcome back to Vetsplanation.
Dr. Sugerman: I have two amazing guests with me [00:01:00] today. So I know that we had been talking about our FIP journey with Moaning Myrtle, and I'm really excited because we're actually In a Harry Potter background room right now, just to tie all of this theme in. So we're going to be talking to Moaning Myrtle's moms.
Dr. Sugerman: So we have Tori, who's actually Dr. St. Cin, who works with me and Renée. All right. So I just want to talk about Moaning Myrtle's journey and what you guys have gone through for her. So first of all, can you tell me like, how did you get her?
Dr. Tori St. Cin: Yeah. What happened was someone brought this tiny little kitten in to the emergency room.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: They had found her just laying out in the middle of their yard. She was cold and looked pretty rough. She was very young. Shouldn't have been without her mom at that point. And she had this really bad infected eye. Bad enough that she was gonna need surgery. And so the, the lady was very kind and she's like, you know what, I'll pay for an exam.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: See if this is something that's easy to fix. And then I might keep her. But otherwise, if she needs something major, we're gonna just have to [00:02:00] put her down. And so the lady stayed, she had an exam with Dr. K. And K said, yes, confirmed, she'd likely have to have her eye removed, and she said I can't do that.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: And they had brought her into the back, during her initial exam, and I saw her, and Renée had actually been saying, putting this out into the world...
Dr. Tori St. Cin: That she wanted to get our other cat, Hermione, a kitten. And she liked the Siamese, and she looked like she was going to be a Siamese color. And so I was like, I feel like there's a calling here.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: And so..
Renée: The color saved her life.
Dr. Sugerman: Right, Exactly.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: Yeah, and the fact that she needed all this care that probably a lot of other people wouldn't have been able to do.
Dr. Sugerman: Exactly.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: And so I took her on and we got her strong enough to go under surgery. She stayed at the hospital. She went through a bunch of tests before I brought her home.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: 'cause I had to make sure the other cats were gonna be safe. Bringing her home. She did have calicivirus, but not really a [00:03:00] huge thing for the other cats.
Dr. Sugerman: And calicivirus is an upper respiratory virus, right?
Dr. Tori St. Cin: Yes. But she got through that, she got through the surgery and then. I got to bring her home to Renée and surprise her. And...
Dr. Sugerman: That's right. You didn't even know. I forgot about that. You had no idea...
Renée: No idea...
Renée: She told me, why don't you stay up late? And I go to bed early and this was like 10 at night. And she's stay up late. I'll bring you home dinner. And I was like...
Dr. Sugerman: You're like, dinner? That's too late.
Renée: I've never eaten dinner at 10 PM. And then she kinda changed it. She was like, why don't you stay up and have dinner with me?
Dr. Tori St. Cin: I tried really hard to keep her awake.
Renée: She tried really hard to keep me awake that night.
Dr. Sugerman: Nice. And what did you think when she brought her home?
Renée: I was very tired because I woke up, but I was surprised. I didn't. Animals have always been a discussion for us. You know what I mean? Who we're going to bring home or who we're going to bring in our house.
Renée: So for her to surprise me, I was like, for real, you did surprise me. Nothing gets past me. So I [00:04:00] was surprised that she actually surprised me.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.
Renée: It was really sweet. It was very sweet of her.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, and she's such a sweet cat.
Renée: She's a very sweet cat.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, I just had my kids over and they were playing with her.
Dr. Sugerman: Loved her a lot.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: Yes, Abigail really, really had some fun with her.
Dr. Sugerman: Yes. So now fast forward. So she was the one that was diagnosed with FIP, like we've been talking about. So what were her first symptoms? Like how did you know something was wrong?
Dr. Tori St. Cin: What you noticed, so we had noticed that someone was pottying or going pee outside of the litter box, which was unusual.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: But I do have an older cat, and who knows? We've got three, three total cats, figure out who's doing it. She finally saw, I think we had noticed it for maybe a week or two. Someone was going outside the box and she saw Myrtle go outside of the box.
Dr. Sugerman: Okay, she saw her, yeah.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: And so I was like, oh, I had noticed, maybe she was a little quieter than normal, she had been spayed not too long prior to that.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: So I thought, she was getting older, she [00:05:00] was maturing. So that's just what I chalked that part up to. She was just a little quieter than typical. I just thought she was calming down. And then, yeah, she's usually...
Renée: We also had a cold front at that time. And so we had heating pads out for them and she was just sleeping.
Dr. Sugerman: This was here, right?
Renée: Yeah.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. We were talking about like the heating doesn't go through a whole house great. Yeah.
Renée: Exactly. So our house is cold because it's a 1920s house. So we were like, oh, it's just a cold front coming through, which we're not used to. And she's just sleeping on the heating pads more. Yeah.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: And then I had also thought, maybe she was at the water bowl a little more than typical.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: But then I'm like, oh, that makes sense. Maybe she's got a UTI.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: So, the following Monday I took her in to the hospital just to check her out. I put the ultrasound probe on her to get urine, to send in for a urinalysis.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: And first thing I saw was a bunch of fluid in her belly.
Dr. Sugerman: Outside of her bladder.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: Outside of her bladder.
Dr. Sugerman: And so we talked about this before, like that's one of the first signs of, or one of the signs of wet FIP. Is you'll see fluid [00:06:00] in some body cavity.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: So she got a full workup that day.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: She got x rays, no fluid in the chest. Thankfully. We sent in the PCR for the FIP, or technically coronavirus, and then she also got full lab work. For the most part, everything looked pretty good. Her proteins were a little low, which we would expect but not bad. So she was, I think, really on the very beginnings of this disease. And we were very lucky that we found it when we did.
Dr. Sugerman: Absolutely. You caught it so early, I feel like.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: And it was really only, honestly, the couple of days following that, that she really started to go down, and she went down fast. And that's pretty, pretty typical of especially the effusive or wet form.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. Poor thing.
Dr. Sugerman: So then, we had talked before about how unfortunately the drug that you use to be able to treat FIP is illegal for us to use and it has to be like on the black market in order to get it. And that's really hard for us [00:07:00] because as a veterinarian we can't prescribe it, we can't use it. So it'd be really difficult for you to use it because it would be going against what we're allowed to do.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: Yeah, so a lot of times we'll recommend folks look on Facebook at that FIP Warriors page and they can get a lot of really great information from there you but me being a veterinarian, that, yeah, was, was risky. So I was like, what are we going to do?
Dr. Sugerman: Did you consider having Renée go and do all of that?
Dr. Tori St. Cin: I did. I thought about it. However, shortly after I found the fluid, I had texted my, my buddy, Callan, Dr. Cooper, who used to work with us, who now lives and works in Colorado.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: She lives in Fort Collins where CSU is. Colorado State University, and I texted her saying, oh my gosh. Our kitten has FIP and surprisingly she was like, oh my gosh, I just diagnosed one of these literally probably 30 minutes ago.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: And our internist, our internist, while we were doing rounds had mentioned that there's a trial at CSU. And [00:08:00] so literally, as soon as she gave me that information, I started Googling it. I found Dr. Petra's information, sent her an email, and within less than 24 hours, I had her an appointment in Colorado.
Dr. Sugerman: That's amazing. That's such a fast turnaround from diagnosing her to getting her into this trial.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: Yeah. But as you and I know, this is one thing you have to move fast on.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, you have very limited time, for sure. Did you talk about any of this with Renée before getting her into the trial or anything?
Dr. Tori St. Cin: No. I mean, Cause right there...
Renée: Well, that's the long and short answer. No.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: There's, there's two options, right?
Dr. Tori St. Cin: To me, it wasn't worth taking a risk for my license. So it was either that we did the trial or we didn't. And if we didn't, that's fatal. But I did come home and fortunately she was awake that night. I think I got home a little early. But she knew, she did know that I was taking Myrtle in to do the test.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: And so she had heard from me all day.
Renée: She told me she was taking her in because she thought she had a [00:09:00] UTI. So I didn't catch up with her all day. This is normal for her to take our pets in, be like, they have some type of ailment, I'm just going to take them in for the day, test them, get them treatment, bring them home.
Renée: So it was not something unusual for her to do that. She didn't get back to me, so I thought, oh, it's just probably a UTI. It's fine. No, she didn't get back to me because she had FIP.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: I always call her on the way home from work, and I had called, and I was doing my very best to avoid the conversation until we got home.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: However, literally right before our exit, she was like, how's Myrtle? And I was like, We can talk about it when I get home I'll be there in five minutes.
Dr. Sugerman: So how did she explain it to you? What FIP is? Because I'm sure that probably isn't something you guys have talked about, because it's usually not something we diagnose very often.
Renée: I think she used a lot of layman's terms of
Dr. Sugerman: Good.
Renée: We don't go to Colorado, she's gonna die. I've already made the appointment. I just want to essentially let you know my plan.
Dr. Sugerman: Which was crazy cause you had your birthday party.
Renée: Yeah, three days, like a [00:10:00] big birthday party, with 20 people coming over.
Renée: And so yeah. So she she had printed out education at work and showed me and I don't. I, I guess I wasn't understanding because I was in shock of being like, I thought she was going to work with the UTI. Now she's coming back with this fatal virus. I was trying to process.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.
Renée: I think of it in the severity of her being like, I have to go to Colorado tomorrow. I'm leaving tomorrow. So my wife is a phenomenal veterinarian and I trusted her that what she saw was appropriate. And when we take on an animal, it's a family member. So we're fortunate to have the finances, capacity, and resources to be able to do this, and so we made the choice.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, nice.
Renée: Yeah, it's pretty phenomenal to care for one of your animals this way.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, absolutely. So then you took her alone to Colorado State for her first treatments and everything. So what happened there? What do you guys do there?
Dr. Tori St. Cin: So, Dr. Petra was wonderful. Obviously, she's a very busy woman.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: She had appointments all day already. And she [00:11:00] was amazing enough to be able to fit her into her busy schedule. She's an internal medicine specialist, so she's at CSU seeing all her normal internal medicine special consults and then also doing this trial on the side. Ultimately what I ended up doing is I went there, we met for a few minutes, discussed everything.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: I had already faxed everything, so she knew all the details and really it was just...
Dr. Sugerman: Did you even have the results back from the PCR at that point?
Dr. Tori St. Cin: No. No. No. But we know there's not a lot of other things. She was confident enough in that, that she was fine with starting treatment.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: I dropped her off and they did, I believe an ultrasound and then they ran a few of their own tests. They did some blood work in house and then they did another type of test, although I think they sent in their own PCR, did their own PCR. I don't know. They probably have their own lab there that they do it.
Dr. Sugerman: And I'm sure with the studies, they probably have to do that.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: Yes.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: So yeah, I dropped her off and they did their tests and then I came back and picked her up and we, I think I left the same night. Flew back here [00:12:00] on the 29th after the appointment.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, exactly.
Dr. Sugerman: Did you have to pay for any of those tests?
Dr. Tori St. Cin: I did not. They were included as part of the trial. The only thing I paid for was she had stopped eating by the time we got to Colorado. Wouldn't eat anything, which was completely unlike her. Because she is a food hound. And eats anything. So the fact that, I even knew that just because the fact that we were in a different place just wasn't enough to make her not want to eat.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: So she wasn't eating. She was looking pretty rough. So I asked for some fluids. And then Dr. Cooper and her wife helped me administer the fluids at their house. And then we jetted off on a plane. But no, the tests were covered. The diagnostics, the medication. So the trial is actually...
Dr. Tori St. Cin: So they are using a medication called molnupiravir, which is a capsule version of an antiviral that is actually a COVID drug.
Dr. Sugerman: The one good thing COVID gave us.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: Yeah. I would say, a lot of times we end up making a lot of progresses in animal medicine that moves to human medicine, but this is a nice case where we have human medicine [00:13:00] improvements that we then get to bring over to the animals.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: So it's a capsule. She gets twice a day. And then the trial is actually determining if a immunostimulant that doctors at CSU have developed to see whether or not cats who take the immunostimulant with the molnupiravir, or the antiviral. If they recover faster or they do better.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: So she's getting either, we don't know which one she's getting. It's a blind trial. So she's getting the antiviral and either a placebo or this immunostimulant.
Dr. Sugerman: So she's still getting treated for it. We just don't know if she's getting something to speed up the recovery, or she's getting the placebo which we know doesn't do anything.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: Yeah.
Dr. Sugerman: Okay. And how do you guys feel that she's been doing?
Dr. Tori St. Cin: Spectacular. Yeah. The doctor had mentioned, she said, usually I see turnaround once we start treatment within about five days,
Dr. Sugerman: That's pretty amazing.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: Yeah. And I was having to syringe feed her probably for about three or four days before she really started eating again on her own.[00:14:00]
Dr. Tori St. Cin: And then after that she just took off. She's not had any issues
Dr. Sugerman: And is she having any troubles taking like her medication or anything?
Dr. Tori St. Cin: She isn't.
Dr. Sugerman: Most cats do.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: Yeah, so the other form is the injectable which I've heard a lot of people end up having injection site reactions, necrosis at the area. Treatable stuff compared to death from the virus.
Dr. Sugerman: Is that the black market drug too? I can't remember. That's an injectable.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: I think it's the remdesivir. I think they have the oral form and the injectable, but I think the injectable has been a bit more cost effective compared to the the oral.
Dr. Sugerman: Just with maybe similar side effects to it.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: Yes. Yeah. But yeah, she actually takes the medication very well.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: When I got her, she was syringe fed until she was strong enough. And so she's used to being syringe fed, so we had that period. And then she's also, now that she's feeling better, very food motivated. So I literally can just put her capsule in a pill pocket, and she takes it. No problem. Like a [00:15:00] treat.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: So that's been really easy.
Dr. Sugerman: Very nice.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: Yeah.
Dr. Sugerman: So you've been back one more time, I think so far, right? And Renée got to go this time as well. Were there any changes to the second time that you went or was it pretty much the same stuff?
Dr. Tori St. Cin: It was pretty similar. So they did tap her abdomen. They grabbed some of the fluid last time, but she didn't have any fluid to tap this time. They just checked and the fluid was actually gone within like less than a week, after she started the meds.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, cause you were bringing her to work..
Dr. Tori St. Cin: To check her.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. To check her.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: And it was all gone. I think they just run the lab work and then she also runs the in-house testing and somehow they're measuring the amount of virus that's detectable. And so I, I'm not sure exactly the, the info on that I'm sure she'll probably be able to explain that better.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: But they're running tests to see what type or how much of the virus is detectable and I can't remember she said after a certain period of time It was very short surprisingly that she was getting most cats, they weren't detecting any at all.
Dr. Sugerman: That's amazing. [00:16:00] Yeah, it's crazy how it went from like a death sentence... to like we could treat all of these cats.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: Yeah. And they... do great.
Dr. Sugerman: Any side effects that you guys have seen yet from the medication?
Dr. Tori St. Cin: Not as of this far, although I don't expect that we will. So with the molnupiravir, she did mention that sometimes hypersalivation.
Dr. Sugerman: So that's drooling.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: Hypersalivation or nausea. And she had just preemptively prescribed Cerenia, but we didn't end up having to use it. She didn't have any of those issues.
Dr. Sugerman: And Cerenia is for nausea, so we try to help decrease the nausea and the drooling as well.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: Yep. I think the oral meds tend to have fewer side effects. Although I have been seeing some articles mentioning with Remdesivir and maybe the GS one...
Dr. Tori St. Cin: I can't remember the number. It's like six numbers in a row.
Dr. Sugerman: Exactly, I put it in the podcast before and I'm like, do you know how hard it was for me to say that number over and over again?
Dr. Tori St. Cin: Yeah. So that one cats that had been on it and got better, they have been seeing some stones [00:17:00] that they think are related to that medication.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: But as far as if the molnupiravir has potential has potential. It's hard to say.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. It's hard, we won't know until much later on. Like with the remdesivir we didn't know for, I don't know, like a couple years, I think. Yeah. And then we just suddenly saw cats that have these weird stones. Yeah.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: But again, fixable.
Dr. Sugerman: Yes, exactly.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: Fixable.
Dr. Sugerman: I'd rather have a live cat that we just have to take some stones out of. And so you have to go back, how many times? How many times total do you have to go?
Dr. Tori St. Cin: It's a total of four follow up visits.
Dr. Sugerman: Follow up visits or four total?
Dr. Tori St. Cin: I think it's four total. I think it's four total visits.
Renée: Yeah, it was the initial and then three follow up.
Dr. Sugerman: Okay.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: Yeah, so she's got this one coming up this month, at the end of this month, and then one more. So yeah, four total.
Dr. Sugerman: And how does she do flying on the plane?
Renée: She loves it. She loves it. She walks through the airport on her leash. And yeah, [00:18:00] it's so funny. At home, she's a little rambunctious, maybe a little rough with our other cats. So we were nervous about her going on the plane and being loud and rowdy, but we'll put her blanket out in a chair at the airport.
Renée: She just sits there and people watches. It's wild. She's so good. It's almost like she knows this is like her mercy flight. I'm like, I'm going to be my best behavior because they're saving my life. It's wild, but she's so good and adorable. And then she gets a lot of attention. She gets a lot of attention.
Dr. Sugerman: And then you put her in a carrier under the seat, right?
Renée: Yeah. It's a mesh carrier. So it's a backpack. She normally likes to ride in that. We actually trained her as a kitten to ride in a backpack. So...
Dr. Sugerman: Didn't you go take her hiking?
Renée: Yes. So it saved us. Cause now we just put her in a backpack and take her on the plane.
Renée: So for her, it feels like a normal day with my moms. Which is fortunate.
Dr. Sugerman: That's amazing. Yeah, I'm so glad that she does so well with that. I know that's very hard for cats [00:19:00] sometimes. But, we do you have medications and stuff to help calm them down at least?\
Dr. Tori St. Cin: I do carry gabapentin when I fly, if needed.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.
Dr. Sugerman: Great. I feel like she's been doing so well with this. You only have two more times that you have to go back then. I wonder what the next steps are, I know that you had mentioned that Dr. Petra said that she could relapse from this, right?
Dr. Tori St. Cin: Mm hmm.
Dr. Sugerman: And then what would happen if she relapses?
Dr. Tori St. Cin: Good question. We haven't gotten that far. I don't know if she's in the trial, if she would continue on that medication, or if we would be on our own. That's not a conversation that we've had yet.
Dr. Sugerman: And hopefully not a conversation you do have to have.
Renée: How do you know if she's relapsed?
Dr. Sugerman: That's a great question.
Dr. Sugerman: So a lot of times it's just looking at her on ultrasound and stuff again. Unfortunately, like when we do that testing for the PCR for coronavirus. She'll still remain positive after that, so it's not really going to help us in that sense. It's really just looking for those clinical signs again.
Dr. Sugerman: So her just becoming lethargic and I guess peeing [00:20:00] outside of the litter box for her.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: Yeah. But she had mentioned some studies in Europe were correlating weight gain during the study to those cats that may or may not relapse when they're finished with the medication. Apparently the cats who did really well and gained weight normally during the trial usually don't relapse, but those who maybe stall on weight gain might end up relapsing at the end of treatment.
Dr. Sugerman: And did she stall on weight gaining?
Dr. Tori St. Cin: She wasn't super happy on what her weight was at our last recheck. I didn't get the numbers from her, so I wasn't quite sure. I was actually pretty, pretty happy with how she looked.
Dr. Sugerman: I was going to say, I feel like she did gain weight.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: She got physically larger. So I think that might be part of it.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: She actually was growing when she wasn't before. And she had a bunch of fluid in her belly at that checkup the first time. So she had fluid weight that she didn't have afterwards cause all that fluid actually drained out on her flight home. And yeah, I think she put on weight, she got bigger, so I wasn't really too [00:21:00] worried about it, but I think she just wanted to keep an eye on it.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: And the plan was, that if she hadn't gained enough weight, which she didn't give me as far as what numbers that would be. Then she was going to up the dose. And she said she had pretty good success with that.
Dr. Sugerman: Nice. You had said that she lost that water on the flight. So did she just pee all over her carrier? Is that what happened?
Dr. Tori St. Cin: No. So it was she said she got a little rambunctious when they were doing the abdominal tap. And she freaked out. And I think it just made a little bit bigger hole than it was supposed to be at that point. And so it was draining from that site and it just leaked out the hole.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: So it was just a a little stint to just make sure you get all that fluid out. But yeah, so it just drained a little faster than it absorbed.
Dr. Sugerman: Nice... I mean, one way or the other, it's got to come out, right?
Dr. Tori St. Cin: She sent us home some potty pads. She said she thinks she's going to continue to leak. I'm sorry about that.
Dr. Sugerman: Have you had to do any blood work or anything at work since then?
Dr. Tori St. Cin: I haven't. I didn't see any need at that point. She [00:22:00] was already going to be getting the lab work there. The only thing that I did was I followed up with recheck ultrasounds. Just to make sure that the fluid was going away.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. And has she become more rambunctious than how she was before?
Dr. Tori St. Cin: Yes, she's back to her old ways.
Renée: Back to her old ways, which is good to see, right? That's promising and we feel good about that. Even when she...
Dr. Tori St. Cin: And we felt a little guilty. Because we were like, oh, she wasn't maturing. She was just very ill.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. But that's like I said, when we see that at work so often people always be like I just thought they were getting older. I thought they were just slowing down because they were becoming not a kitten anymore. That happens so often to us.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. All the time.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: Yep.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: It's hard to know what to watch out for, but...
Dr. Sugerman: Exactly. Was there anything else you guys wanna share about like the FIP journey?
Renée: No. It's been a good decision to do the trial. . And it's good to see her responding well.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: Yeah. It feels [00:23:00] good to be part of a medical trial that's gonna hopefully really advance what we can do for this previously untreatable, fatal disease.
Dr. Sugerman: Exactly. That's such a big thing to be able to be a part of that and help them figure out what kind of drugs to be able to give to these cats.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: And it makes, makes me feel like, again, like she said earlier, there's a reason that she ended up with us. There's a reason we did all the things that she, trained her to be in the crate, or in the carrier, the backpack.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: So everything... There was a reason.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: And now we get to help other cats.
Dr. Sugerman: Nice. Very nice.
Dr. Sugerman: All right. So now it's my time that I get to ask a random question for you guys. So Renée, I'm going to start with you. So what is your favorite animal, not a dog or a cat?
Renée: Oh, no, those are my favorites. Um, I have always gravitated to elephants.
Dr. Sugerman: Elephants. My wife loves elephants as well. She does, yeah. She has an elephant tattoo.
Renée: Very nice.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: I didn't realize that.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, yeah. Yep. Elephants? Okay, so why do [00:24:00] you like elephants so much?
Renée: I just feel like they're so smart. I also feel like they've gone through many injustices with how humans treat them.
Renée: Yeah. And so I think my heart really feels for them. I think their family structure as well is very unique, that they protect each other in the wild. Which you don't see a lot, especially with larger animals that can protect themselves. And I just think they are just goofy. If you look at them, I'm like, how, what?
Renée: There's this trunk that they use as a straw and then the ears and then the tiny little tail. I'm like, none of it makes sense. And then it got all put together on their body.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: Just imagine like sticking a straw in your nose and drinking,
Renée: Yeah, it's just...
Renée: I look at them and I'm like, what?
Renée: They're just...
Dr. Sugerman: Like, how did evolutionary you come to this?
Renée: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So yeah, I just, I just, I think, yeah,
Dr. Sugerman: Nice.
Renée: Elephants.
Dr. Sugerman: All right Tori, so why did you become a veterinarian?
Dr. Tori St. Cin: Oh [00:25:00] as a child, I always thought that that's what I wanted to do. I, I grew up in a pretty small town.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: Always loved animals. It was always, I didn't have a lot. Growing up my grandparents had cattle and pigs and I loved going over and seeing them and feeding the pigs corn or whatever we were feeding them.
Dr. Sugerman: Anything, eat anything.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: Yeah. and, and I grew up with dogs. But as I got older I still loved animals, but I got really big into art and decided, Oh, this is really fun. I want to pursue this as a career.
Dr. Sugerman: Art specifically.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: Yes. Art. Yes. And so I went to school for graphic design and actually what ended up really pushing me was my cousin Chase. He ended up going to school, he was doing all his prerequisites, his undergrad stuff to prep himself to get into vet school.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: And I felt jealous. I felt jealous. I was like, maybe this is what I'm supposed to be doing because I had been working in the field doing stuff during the winter and the summer when I wasn't in [00:26:00] school. As far as the art degree went, I hated it. Like I hated people judging my art and being like, I don't like this. Make it look like this.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: I'm like, but that doesn't look good. And then so, this is obviously not what I'm supposed to be doing. And so I just decided, you know what, I'm going to finish this degree. I'll have it as a backup if I don't get into vet school and I'm going to take it from there.
Dr. Sugerman: Nice.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: Never look back.
Dr. Sugerman: Good.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: It was the right choice.
Dr. Sugerman: I do have a funny story. We actually started the exact same day, at our work, and it said on the schedule T.S., which would be Tori St. Cin, but it's also Tyler Sugerman.
Dr. Sugerman: T.S. was in the morning, and T.S. was in the evening, and I was really confused.
Dr. Sugerman: I was like, am I working 24 hours?
Dr. Tori St. Cin: Yes.
Dr. Sugerman: Because I didn't know that you had been hired as well.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: Yeah.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: I forgot about that.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.
Dr. Tori St. Cin: So then they switched it to TSC for me.
Dr. Sugerman: Yes, TSC and TSM.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.
Dr. Sugerman: All right thank you again guys so much. I really, really appreciate you coming on and and [00:27:00] also what you did.
Dr. Sugerman: It's just, again, it's so amazing to be able to do this for science and like really help these cats out. All right. Thanks guys. So as always, please keep your pets happy, healthy, and safe. Thank you guys.
Dr. Sugerman: Thank you guys for listening this week. If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or you just want to say hi, you can email me at Suggs, S U G G S @ VetsplanationPodcast.com or visit the website at VetsplanationPodcast.com or find us on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok at Vetsplanation. Thank you all for listening and I'll see you back here next week.