Hyphema is blood in the eye. This occurs in the anterior chamber, or the space between the cornea and iris.
There are many causes of hyphema including trauma, poisoning such as snake or spider bite and occassionally diseases like FIP.
When Googamoose was 4 weeks old, he became very ill, with subacute body temperature, lack of appetite and severe hyphema in his eyes. For 4 days I kept him next to my bed on a headpad and bottle force fed him. I did not expect him to live.
I gave him heated subcute fluids, and because I felt he was going to die anyhow, I also gave him zythromycin. This was a risk because of his size, his age, and the fact that while I find that it works very well in cats, it's an off label use.
On day 5, I felt like "Moose" was actually going to pull through. And he did. Today he is a happy, healthy sweet cat, who will be 2 in July.
Did he actually survive FIP?....I suspect that most would say no, that something else was killing him and he got over it, but I suspect that he did actually wage war with the virus and won. But because I didn't have any lab work done and because the lab work is so nonspecific in FIP diagnosis anyhow, we are going to have to take that one on faith. The good news is he did survive.
In the picture you can see the hyphema still present a few weeks after he recovered. It took about 3 months to completely resolve, and I didn't think at the time to take pictures of it when it first occured, but his entire eyes were filled with blood. In the picture, it was about 1/2 reabsorbed, and it occured to me that this FIP experience should be documented.
In the second picture taken about 6 months ago, you can see his eyes cleared completely.
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Sure sounds to me like he was fighting off FIP. You would know better than I what the symptoms are in a kitten that young. But you have to wonder what else it could have been. Most of the time when they are that young and get that sick, the low temperature is very bad, they are fighting a loosing battle against something. Most young kittens that I've had that have died it has been because of a congential thing, usually having to do with their hearts. But Moose was definitely fighting a virus from what you describe. Lucky little boy to have someone take such good care of him. I had never heard of Hyphema before, very useful information.
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