# Seizures



## scratchmonkey (Jul 3, 2009)

Just posting because I feel like I have to vent somewhere and everybody around me is probably tired of hearing about it.

Our small cat, The Shredder, has been having seizures. She's had them before, over a year ago. It seemed like she was just being excessively nervous, then we noticed the shaking, drooling and urination. We put her on phenobarbital for a while, she seemed fine, we slowly dialed down the dosage and she was drug- and seizure-free for over a year.

Then she started having them again a little over a week ago. We took her to the vet and we put her on phenobarbital, half a tablet twice a day. She kept having them regularly and near the end of the week, the frequency took off. She had 8 seizures on Thursday and 13 Seizures on Friday. We rushed her to the vet who did a full check-up and some blood work. She appears to be in perfect health, aside from the fact that every 2 hours she has a seizure.

The vet gave us the go-ahead to double the dose yesterday afternoon, which he warned us would make her sleepy and groggy. We see that from time to time; she's still having seizures though, six of them already today by 10AM. Only one of the seizures, nearly a week ago, was a gran mal seizure, which greatly frightened us. All of the others have been petit mal -- she starts out by sniffing and flicking her tongue, pulling her head up and back into the body and usually off to one side. She twitches violently for about 10-20 seconds, never losing conciousness, then drools and urinates before going into post-ictal. She also makes her "in great stress" vocalizations before and after.

At night we cordon her in the bathroom so that we know where she is when she has vocalizations, we've also blocked off the counter so that she can't get up on it. During the day we've been letting her out, although I'm wondering about whether it might be more comforting to her to be kept to one area (one problem is that she doesn't use the litterbox that we've set up in the bathroom). We'd let her sleep on us, which she normally prefers to do, we go through a ridiculous amount of bedding that way with all the peeing.

I don't know what to do. I can't get any sleep because I just lie there in bed waiting to hear her cry out and then rush to her. I know that phenobarbital takes 7-14 days to reach a therapeutic level; there just doesn't seem to be any improvement at all though. I'm depressed and just generally a wreck all the time from worrying about her and from seeing her being constantly in post-ictal, weak and scared and unable to recognize either myself or my wife.

If anybody has any advice/shared experiences from having a cat with seizure problems, it would be much appreciated.


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## KatBudz (Jun 18, 2009)

Oh no  Your poor cat. I don't have any experience with seizures but I'll keep her in my prayers. I hope the medicine kicks in soon and she feels better ASAP! Sending healing vibes your way atback


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## Xanti (Nov 4, 2008)

That sounds awful 

I know your vet did blood work but do you think it might be viable to get a brain scan or similar? Might this be a tumour?


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## laurief (Jun 22, 2008)

I had a cat with seizures once, but that was long before I knew enough to ask questions and do research ... and long before the internet. I know a heck of a lot more now, though unfortunately not much more about feline seizures.

Did your vet run a thyroid test on your girl? If not, I recommend you have him do so. If nothing shows up on the thyroid test, and depending on your financial situation, you may want to consider taking her to a university vet school clinic where she can be evaluated and diagnosed by specialists. They may recommend a CAT scan or MRI to check for a brain tumor or other physical anomaly.

I hope you can get answers and a successful solution soon. It sounds like sheer misery for both your cat and for you.

Laurie


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## scratchmonkey (Jul 3, 2009)

Xanti said:


> I know your vet did blood work but do you think it might be viable to get a brain scan or similar? Might this be a tumour?


We've talked about seeing a kitty neurologist if she doesn't improve by Monday (although I was warned by the same vet when this first happened that identifying brain problems is often not worth it because there's usually nothing that can be done); I'm just worried that she's not going to make it by then. She just another one on my lap while I was replying to this post (I did stop and take care of her). Part of me wants to go to the Emergency Vet and have them give her an IV of Diazepam, as I've heard that that's worked in other situations, I gather that Diazepam is generally reserved for emergencies like the cat entering into a seizure and not coming out because there's risk associated with it of developing fatal liver problems.


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## Xanti (Nov 4, 2008)

I think I might do that if I were you...at least maybe call the emergency vet and see what they say?

Also, if she is having THAT many and nothing seems to be helping her...and if you think she is suffering a lot, it might be time to ask yourself if you want to let her go 

I do not envy you and I really feel for you.


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## scratchmonkey (Jul 3, 2009)

I'm actually not sure to what degree she's suffering, it's unclear how conscious she is during the vocalizations and I've been assured by multiple sources that seizures are completely painless. When she's between episodes, she can be extremely loving and affectionate and she's eating and drinking fine (in fact, she's gained half a pound in a week because seizures make her hungry, so she's eating all the time*).

* - Just as a note, she and our other cat both graze on Innova Evo dry food over the course of the day. I'm interested in wet food, the only problem is that she doesn't know how to eat it, she just stands in it and then walks wet food all over the house.


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## scratchmonkey (Jul 3, 2009)

To update, we've seen a slight improvement -- after 15 seizures yesterday, she's had six so far today and they've seemed much weaker overall. She's only had one where she lost bladder control, the last two she had while napping and she just shook for a small time, looked around and went back to sleep. When she isn't sleeping, we see more of her "normal" behaviors cropping up, like kneading and doing the "cat stretch", things she hadn't been doing for a couple days. My hope is that the phenobarbital is starting to kick in (we are only on day 8 and they say it takes 7-14 days); I'm still trying to steel myself for doing what's best for her if she can't get better though.


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## Luvkitties (Jan 22, 2009)

If you can afford it, it could be great to go see a kitty neurologist.

I can't tell for cats because I only work with humans, but there are a lot of different medications for seizures. Maybe another one would work better. They also might be able to tell you if there's an underlying lesion causing the seizures (that would allow you to decide better on what's the best for your kitty).


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## scratchmonkey (Jul 3, 2009)

If we do decide to do that, I'm going to take her to the UC Davis vet clinic. It's only an hour away, their Small Animal Clinic has a Neuroscience/Neurosurgery Service and given the general quality of Davis in terms of animal husbandry, I would be surprised if it wasn't top-quality. My regular vet is a Davis grad, so I'll talk to him about it tomorrow morning.

My hope is that she just has idiopathic epilepsy; although I don't know much about how this actually works, the fact that she had seizures, went on meds for 6-8 weeks and then went off meds for well over a year without a seizure makes me think (again this is probably just wishful thinking) that it isn't something progressive because it doesn't seem like it would work like that.


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## OctoberinMaine (Sep 12, 2006)

I'm so sorry to hear about this and I can really relate. Our 3-year old cat Rookie had primary epilepsy and had seizures exactly like you're describing. The seizures continued with phenobarbital and it was a terrible, terrible situation. We were told the next step would be to take her to a neurologist, and even then there was only a 50/50 chance they'd find the cause of the illness. In any case, it just didn't seem plausible. Even if we were in the "lucky" 50% and they found the cause, it seemed very remote that we would actually have her treated for it. We weren't going to have brain surgery done, and the thoughts of putting her through that were just horrific.

One particularly bad Saturday Rookie had 3 seizures, the last of which was followed by her attacking me with 2 or 3 lunges and literally hanging off my arm by her teeth. I'm amazed to hear how long you've been dealing with this. In our case -- and this was just our case -- we decided to have her euthanized after only a couple weeks of the symptoms appearing. You've put in a lot more time and I can only imagine the anguish of dealing with this for such a long time. I'm sorry and do understand. Please PM me if you're interested . . .


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## scratchmonkey (Jul 3, 2009)

Thanks for the advice and sympathy. She's had 40 seizures since Friday (three already so far today) and our regular vet has referred us to a neurologist, who hasn't called back yet. It seems more and more likely to me that nothing can be done and the best thing for her will be to let her go.

I'm devastated at the very thought. She'll only be turning seven this month and she's always been so special to me. I'll admit, I really don't want to let her go; if it's the best thing for her, I need to stop being selfish and help her get what she needs, no matter what.


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## Fran (Jan 9, 2008)

atback 

Just a note to say how sorry I am that you and your kitty are going through this. Hugs to you and the little kitty girl...

Fran


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## scratchmonkey (Jul 3, 2009)

We've made the decision to drive her up to Davis and see what they say -- the price for a full neurological workup is very scary, especially since there's no guarantee that they can do anything if they do find out what's wrong; I think we would both feel absolutely horrible if we didn't at least talk to the specialist and see what we can find out and what we can possibly do. I'll post what happens on here, I know that information on this sort of thing is often hard to come by and if nothing else, we can hopefully give an insight into how this sort of thing works to others who may be going through this in the future.


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## OctoberinMaine (Sep 12, 2006)

It's devastating, you're right. Most of us have lost a cat in one way or another and know exactly what you're talking about. If it does come to letting her go, it sounds like you can take comfort in knowing you did _absolutely everything _you could. As devastated as I was to lose Rookie this way, I still feel it was the right thing to do.


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## scratchmonkey (Jul 3, 2009)

Holly, I have to thank you for your posts on Rookie, it was very helpful for me to read them and understand that letting go of your cat is sometimes the best thing that you can do for them and to know that somebody else had gone through something similar with an even younger cat had made experience somehow more bearable.

Shredder is going to be at the UC Davis Small Animal Clinic for at least two nights, she had bloodwork today and they said that it looked normal. Tomorrow is the ultrasound, X-ray and MRI, the latter of which is late enough in the day that they said that they wanted to hold onto her that night as she would still be weak from the experience. After we got home we got a call from the student technician telling us what was happening and he also informed us that she was "rambunctious" when they were putting the catheter in, which at least brought a smile to my face. I'll continue to keep updating this thread as events continue.


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## OctoberinMaine (Sep 12, 2006)

Please do, I'll be anxious to hear how she's doing.


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## scratchmonkey (Jul 3, 2009)

Well, I'm not surprised to say that after talking with the doctors, that all of the tests have come back with Shreds looking like a perfectly healthy kitty, meaning that she either has primary epilepsy or something difficult to ferret out.

They have said that she has had seizures even with a pheno IV, so my goal before she comes home is to talk to them about what alternative anti-convulsant therapies we should be looking into, since this appears to be a purely seizure control issue. I am hoping that judicious use of Diazepam and/or bromide (or something more obscure) can at least reduce the frequency of the seizures, if not eliminate them completely.


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## OctoberinMaine (Sep 12, 2006)

Isn't that the amazing thing, that they're completely healthy except for this one problem. It sounds like you've got some good ideas for other things to try. When is she coming home from Davis? I guess she'll be bringing laundry with her, since she's a kid coming home from college?  

I'm curious.....did Shreds do some weird howling before the seizures started? Rookie had a few days where she made this howling sound that we had never heard before, and then the seizures started a couple days later. The howling must have been some kind of warning. The other thing we've never been sure of is that a year before the seizures began, Rookie had a 3-month period where she was peeing on furniture and rugs, and there was nothing medically wrong with her at the time. We wonder if the peeing was some kind of early warning that something was wrong with her. Just wondered if you've had similar experiences.


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## scratchmonkey (Jul 3, 2009)

Holly, sorry for not replying for a bit, it's been an extremely long and trying week.

Shreds did in fact have the yowling. When she was having seizures, it would present both before and after the seizures, although not both on any one seizure. And both times that she developed seizures, both a year ago and a couple of weeks ago, she had a period of acting extremely agitated and making yowling sounds, without us being able to figure out what was going on. 

Talking to the vet yesterday, it turns out that the yowling and the dilation of the eyes can be evidence of a small partial seizure, so the behavior that we both observed in our cats could have been a number of extremely minor seizures that eventually built up into the full-blown seizures later.

As for Shredder and how she's doing, I'm afraid at this point the odds of her coming home are extremely thin. After trying pheno for the bulk of the week with no real reduction in the seizures, they put her on a Valium drip yesterday and initially it looked like it was successful, with no seizures being recorded overnight. However, when they tried to to dial down the dosage from the drip, she went into near-constant seizure activity and had an EEG of her brain that looked pretty bad. Right now they're trying to intubate and sedate her, a procedure that will involve her eating through an IV and the possibility of mechanical respiration. This is pretty much a last-ditch attempt to bring her through. It's been tough not seeing her since Monday while wondering if I'd ever see her alive again; at this point I have to feel that it's not going to happen and I feel bad about having to put her through this while at the same time knowing that I had to have tried everything that I could.


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## OctoberinMaine (Sep 12, 2006)

I'm so sorry. You're definitely doing everything you can and I really sympathize with both you and Shreds that you're having to go through this. 

That's very interesting about the howling. We thought it must have been related, but this confirms it. It was definitely a noise we had never heard out of her before, and you just knew something was wrong. The vets kept telling us it was a behavioral problem. _Right._

For what it's worth, there is a web site that gives points for a cat or dog having certain symptoms, and if the points equal a certain threshold then they think it's time for euthanasia. The goal is to take the emotion out of the decision. In our case with Rookie, she didn't have any of the symptoms listed except one -- peeing on herself. That was worth 8 points, and 8 was the point where they recommended euthanasia. If you're interested in seeing that site, I'll look for it and pass along the link.

In the meantime, I really feel for you and please let me know how things are going.


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## scratchmonkey (Jul 3, 2009)

Holly, I have seen that page and I agree that if Shredder is in a situation where she has near-constant seizures with loss of bladder control (although for the last couple days we had her at home she was only urinating in 1 out of every 8 or so seizures) that her quality of life wouldn't be worth it. It's a tough decision to have to make, if it was something that happened every month or so, I imagine that we would probably decide to see if we could make it work.

The last few days have been rough because every phone call from the vets has been alternating in terms of good and bad news, so we go from a night free of seizures to a situation where she has to be intubated in order to get her body temperature down from the seizures she had when they tried to dial back the drip. They've even had to bring out a machine that they supposedly have never used before as they want to look at her brain while she's in the ICU.


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## scratchmonkey (Jul 3, 2009)

My wife and I drove up to see Shredder this morning. It was tough because she wasn't herself at all, although she was resting. The valium had her so doped up that she could barely open her eyes and she didn't really move at all the entire time we were there. It was good to see her and to pet her and tell her she was a good cat though.

Holly, I talked to the doctor while I was there about what she things what might be happening. Apparently there's a condition which is necrosis of the hippocampus that is either seizure-causing or is caused by seizures (there isn't a lot of information on it yet) which interestingly has the side-effect of making the cat extremely aggressive, including towards its owners, which made me think of you and Rookie.


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## OctoberinMaine (Sep 12, 2006)

Interesting. I'll look up more on that. Were they saying the necrosis was a type of epilepsy, or is that something different altogether? There's another member of the Forum who posted a heart-breaking story about her dog attacking some foster kittens after coming out of a seizure, so I did know that aggression after a seizure does happen. I sure never blamed Rookie for that; it was clearly the disease talking and not her. It did, however, sort of serve as a "look how awful this has gotten" marker.

I can relate so much to what you're saying. When we had Rookie on a dose of phenobarbitol that ultimately turned out to be too high, she would sit still, not moving a muscle, for half an hour at a time. I kept checking to see if she was breathing because it honestly looked like she may have died. 

I don't think we've seen any pictures of Shreds on here. Do you have one you could post? I'll post a picture of our sweet Rookie below.

It sounds like you're on a roller coaster of emotions with the different reports coming from the people at Davis. Hang in there, you can do this, and you're doing all the right things. Whatever happens, you'll deal with it.


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## scratchmonkey (Jul 3, 2009)

I believe that what they know about necrosis of the hippocampus is that it either causes seizures, or it's damage done to the cells from seizures that then causes other seizures, a bit of a chicken-and-an-egg situation where they don't have the largest body of data to look at. The doctor did say that things they tend to see as part of it are a noted personality change with a tendency towards aggression, which I think is well outside of the post-ictal state immediately following a seizure where you might also see aggressive behavior.

Here's a picture of Shreds inspecting a plush robot that my wife made for a young cousin of ours:


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## OctoberinMaine (Sep 12, 2006)

Ahh, I didn't know Shreds was a black kitty! She's just gorgeous. 

I think you're right about the personality distinction. Rookie didn't have an overall personality change, as much as being groggy from the medication and that one incident of being aggressive. Are you getting updates over the weekend, or are they not working on Sunday?


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## scratchmonkey (Jul 3, 2009)

We get updates at (roughly) 8AM and 6PM every day, if there's a major development it's the doctor that calls, if it's the status quo from the previous call, we get a student technician who called today, they're planning to keep her sedated until tomorrow because there aren't as many people around during the weekend and they want as many eyes on her as possible when they do try and dial it back.

Again, I'm sorry to hear about Rookie, she looks beautiful.


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## OctoberinMaine (Sep 12, 2006)

Hi Scratch, just wondered if there's an update about Shreds?


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## scratchmonkey (Jul 3, 2009)

Hi Holly, me and my wife went to go see Shreds this morning. She was a lot more lucid than she was on Saturday, although she couldn't walk. We're pretty sure that she knew who we were and we sat there and stroked her and talked to her for a while. She's starting to get feisty about the intubation and that was going to come out this afternoon as she was starting to try and chew/claw at it. They're also going to try and move her back to solid food today.

Basically, we need to see if her gradual reduction off of Valium and from an extremely high dosage of pheno (the doctor said that it was the highest dosage of pheno she'd ever given to a cat and she was recovering from it far faster than expected, basically she must have some kind of ridiculous metabolism) over the next couple of days leads to any seizures or manic/compulsive behavior of an aggressive bent. She's out of the ICU and back in the general ward, which is both good and bad -- good in that she's doing better and it's a lot less expensive; she's going to have less eyes on her all day though.


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## OctoberinMaine (Sep 12, 2006)

I guess that's one _small_ consolation with seizures -- that anyone in the room would hear and know it's going on, as compared to some other type of disease.

I'm so glad to hear she's doing a little better. I bet she loved your visit.


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## scratchmonkey (Jul 3, 2009)

Well, Shreds is home as of three hours ago and has been seizure-free since last Friday. The drugs are still affecting her greatly; at least I hope that it's the drugs and not any permanent damage. Right now she's barely capable of walking, her back end keeps giving out and she will either fall over or slump onto her side, especially when trying to turn around. She can't jump at all and I can't leave her unsupervised or with water out, as she may hurt herself or drown in the bowl.

I suspect that I am just being overly worried about the situation* and her condition can be entirely chalked up to the fact that she was basically knocked out for 3 days on a Valium drip and is on a very large dose of pheno (22 mg twice a day). I hope that she is able to adjust and start to be herself again eventually.

* - Evidence for this is that part of my instructions from the vet are to keep an eye on her so that she doesn't hurt herself by falling off things and to only offer food and water while she is supervised.


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## OctoberinMaine (Sep 12, 2006)

I'm glad she's home! That must be a relief to you. It sounds like she's pretty drugged up, though. Are they talking about adjusting her dosage?


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## WhiteKitties (Dec 22, 2008)

I'm so glad to hear that she's back at home! Sounds like you're definitely not out of the woods yet, but our kitties seem to recover sooo much faster once they get back home. Good luck, and we'll be thinking of you and Shreds!


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## scratchmonkey (Jul 3, 2009)

Her three modes right now seem to consist of: 

A: Sleeping

B: Stalking around the house, checking things out

C: Demanding attention while yelling at you

Her coordination seems to be much improved, she can reliably go up and down the (easy) set of stairs to our split-level room and jumping off of things seems to be pretty easy; she's still not that good at jumping up onto things and we have to keep her away from anything too low, the bed seems to be the high bar for right now.

We've DIYed a "crate" for her consisting of a baby crib with sheets winding through the slats after we discovered last night that she can somehow get through the less-than-2" space between them.

I'm hoping that she'll get less dopey sometime next week, we're very fortunate in that we have a couple of friends who work from home who have volunteered to hang out at the house with her while me and my wife are at work, we could crate her for that time; I'm sure she'll appreciate having somebody around who will let her wander around the house now and then though.

In terms of adjusting her dosage, there hasn't been much talk of it yet. We have a checkback with Davis in three weeks and I'm sure that we'll talk about that with the neuro if she's still having difficulty walking. It will also depend on what her blood level of pheno is, since the liver will adjust to it over time and we'll want to make sure that we're in the therapeutic "trough".


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## OctoberinMaine (Sep 12, 2006)

I can't believe she got through the 2" slats! That sounds like a really good idea to use a crib as a "crate," too. 

I'm so glad she's making progress. I take it from what you're saying that she hasn't had any seizures since getting home from Davis? If so, that's real progress!


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## scratchmonkey (Jul 3, 2009)

She hasn't, which means she's been seizure-free for a week now, and she's seemed more and more normal each day that she's been home. She still doesn't have her full range of movement; she's much better at walking though, she barely falls over anymore and she regularly handles low jumps like getting off and on the bed.


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## BlueOwner (Jul 30, 2009)

My cat started having seizures 5 years ago. None of the allopathic vets have been able to help him. I even took him to a specialized neurological vet center for an MRI and spinal tap - it was not a happy experience for anyone! He was diagnosed with epilepsy - like a generic diagnosis with no specific causes. They checked for everything, including hypoglycemia. I also checked with his breeder, and his bloodline never had seizures.

I started working with a homeopathic vet, and got his seizures under control - from 1 seizure every week to once every 6 months. I put him on essential fatty acids (omega 3/6/ and 9) 2 years ago, and he has been seizure free to date. The DHA I use comes from Halo Pets, called Dream Coats. It is odorless, and created for pets. I give him a dropper once in the morning, and once at night.

The other thing my homeopathic vet did was take him off all vaccines, since he is a totally indoor kitty. I did some research on the internet, and vaccines (especially, the rabies one) may cause seizures, allergies, etc.

Good luck. 

BlueOwner


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