kitten brain swelling,sliding around in circles and blindness

We rescued a cute little kitten (about 40 days old) trying to cross the highway about a week ago. After a few days of acting scared it adjusted great into our home. My 2 year old daughter fell absolutely in love with our new kitty. We have a 5 year old dog in the house and we had a cat before (she ran away). Both animals kept a distance and every now and then the kitty would hiss at our dog. Before yesterday the dog was eating when the kitty ran up to it and hissed at it. It seems that the dog snapped at the kitten and held it's head in its mouth. This comes as a shock to us, but it is, afterall, natural animal behaviour to be protective over food. It was our mistake to not have kept them apart longer. My husband shouted at the dog and the dog ran off leaving the kitty laying on the floor, neck odly twisted and gasping for air so my husband gave the kitty CPR and it started breathing normally. Eyes were glossy though and since then the kitty has had a head tilt and hasn't been able to walk on it's own. We put it in a box and the emergency vet arrived within 20 minutes. It gave her an anti-inflamatory and pain killer shot in its back leg. Yesterday we fed the kitty using a syringe and gave her glucose. We went to the vet hospital and unfortunately they didn't have a CT scan (we're in the Middle East in Kuwait, there are only 3 vet hospitals and all poorly equiped) but the doctor told us there's brain swelling in the kitten and that she is blind. He told us that it's a bad sign that she has a head tilt and that her reflexes are all involuntary (which i find hard to believe because it seems a lot calmer if i'm touching it or my husband as opposed to strangers like the vet). The vet gave us Valium to give to the kitty when we see that she's in pain and wait till the swelling goes down. He didn't want to give it anti-inflamatory meds. We administer the valium using a syringe into its anus. It calms down after a couple of minutes and sleeps. Everytime we see her starting to do the circles in the carton box we give her more (around every 4 hrs, 0.3ml). We feed her in between and she eats eagerly. She seems stronger today but she seems just as 'damaged'.

Has anyone gone through or seen somehting like this? Is there any chance for recovery? Is the blindness permanent? Should we not try to save her as maybe we're causing her more pain and extending an inevitable and painful death?

I'm so torn about this. Please advise :( it's all so sad.

Thank you, Anna

[opus88]

hi I am so sorry to read about your poor little kitten, I understand the dilemma you are up against....I would give it just a bit longer to see if there is some improvement, if kitty is able to regain some of his reflexes at least. a blind cat can learn to cope just fine, however IMO the blindness may not be permanent either...just to hard to tell at this early stage.
I will send you a website with some info on brain trauma. I also know there have been some posters (search the archives) with kitties in similar brain swelling and their Vets used a drug called MANNITOL to reduce the swelling with very good results.
I agree with you about using anti-inflamitories on cats they can cause more problems than what they correct....good luck. please keep us updated on kitties health, I do hope he makes it...but you must see some gains as you say and not allow him to suffer.

http://veterinarycalendar.dvm360.com/avhc/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=675298&pageID=1&sk=&date=