10 days ago, our one cat (about 2 yrs old) was injured. She was dropped from about waist height, and both of her back knee caps slipped out of place. She yelped in pain and ran limping upstairs and hid. We immediately took her to an emergency vet that night, who determined that she has bilateral luxating patellas (which basically means two slipping knee caps). They said that she would need surgery to correct it, gave her an injection of pain killers and anti-inflammatory drugs, and gave us more drugs to give her at home.
The next morning, she still seemed to be in a lot of pain, and after reading online about the bad effects of the drugs they had given her, I called another local vet and brought her there that afternoon. He thoroughly examined her, and confirmed that she has two slipping knee caps. But he also said that if we kept her confined to a room and limited her activity for a minimum of 10 days, she would most likely heal on her own, because she is young, and she is a small animal (and usually the surgery is only needed for larger dogs, etc). He also said not to give her any of those drugs and just let her relax and heal.
So we kept her confined in our spare bedroom for 10 days. Over the course of the week, she seemed to be improving, walking around, meowing, playing with us, etc. She was eating, drinking, and on Saturday afternoon, we heard her running around in there, and I caught her up on top of the dresser and saw her jump down from there without any pain. She had also been jumping up on the low windowsill and up onto the bed (using an ottoman I put next to it).
Then, Saturday night, I went in to say goodnight to her, and she was stretching her back legs and I saw the left leg get locked up, she just stood there, then cried a little and plopped down on her side. Then she tried to stand up but couldn't, cried more and scurried under the bed. Later on, she was out from under the bed, but just lying on the floor. Sunday morning, we found her on top of the bed, then she was walking around later, and I saw her on the windowsill again. But over all, she is not being herself again. She isn't meowing at the door 24/7 to get out like she had been doing, and when I go into the room to visit, she just lays there and doesn't get up all excited like normal.
The vet had said to re-evaluate her after 10 days and possibly bring her back in if needed, and that's what we plan on doing, either today or tomorrow.
But my question is, have you had a cat with this problem, or know someone who had a cat with slipping knee caps? Have you seen a cat heal from this without surgery? (it mainly seems to be her left leg giving her the problem, and it seems like she can jump, walk etc without any pain. It slips out when she stretches, which you can't stop a cat from doing..but we only saw this happen once over the course of 10 days).
I was told the surgery could be around $3000 per leg, and we just don't have the money for that, but I can't bear losing her over this, just because we can't afford it. I couldn't live knowing we had to put her to sleep because we couldn't pay for a surgery to help her.
Please give me hope with this! We are both so upset and depressed over this entire situation. To make mattters worse, we are leaving for our honeymoon next Saturday, and planned to leave the two cats home and my parents check on them every other day. But now we don't know what we'll do, we will most likely have to leave her confined in that room for 8 days and I think we'll be constantly worried throughout our honeymoon about her and how she is.