jood

Old blind Bear got a clean bill of health this morning and is now nursing in his sleep.

Suck, suck, suck. He's very loud.

You are such a sweet old man.  Dream well.  I hope your dream-mommy is purring against your furry face.

::snugs:: 
 
 

jeviltwin posted pix of what might have been an albino "leaf" yesterday, and it got me thinking about how loudly I squee over albino animals in general.

So I thought I'd share the love. ( Clicky the linky for piccies. )



In non-albino news, Bear is under anesthesia again today while they try to flush out more stones that they think had been lodged in the swollen tissue of his poor urethra. We're getting dangerously close to $4,000 now, and I was crying in the car on the way to work when that really hit me.

Vet just called. Bear's surgery went great, he's already eaten a whole bowl of food, he's snuggling with the vet techs (!), and he's doing the biological things he should be doing. They're so happy with his recovery already that they're not going to transfer him to the emergency 24-hour clinic. We'll probably get to take him home on Monday.

What an incredible, resilient sweetheart he is.

You're all awesome. And I'm a total wuss, whining over a cat this way.

Condescending Vet Lady got back to me and then Rick and I talked and thus is our game plan and rationale:

1. He goes to the specialist tomorrow for the biopsy; it turns out to cost about $350, which is way less than we were led to believe. That way we'll know what we're dealing with. If it's untreatable cancer, we won't put him through the bladder surgery and will send him off with dignity. According to the lab, this seems the most likely outcome, and that is making me very scared.

2. If it's either treatable cancer or scar tissue, we'll get his bladder operated on (including reverse catheterization to remove a crystal blocking his itsy urethra, the poor baby) and remove any discrete tumors, and all will be well.

If he has any kind of cancer, taking out the stones will only make him worse, as his resources will redirect themselves to helping him recover from the surgery, and his liver situation will get worse, or even comprimise his ability to heal from the surgery. So that's not an option, as is simply putting him down because the odds are against him. We figure that $350 is easier to replace than regret over an underinformed decision.

We got new pain medication from a pharmacy that costs a whole lot less and should do a good job. We shall see. Tomorrow mid-day I take him in. We'll get the results (hopefully) on Monday and will then have to make a final decision.

Gah.

Thanks everybody for the kind words and suggestions. I'm freaking out far more than I expected. Sorry if I've been brusque.

Bear just took the last dose of pain meds the vet gave us, and we're supposed to have some sort of diagnosis from the clinic within the next few hours. Big decisions are coming today and my stomach is in knots.

He's been a very good boy, taken all his medication, and despite a bit of understandable loopiness from the painkillers, been extremely sweet and cuddly, and even let me groom him a bit. Too much pulp fiction has me convinced this bodes ill, but of course I am a dork and am hoping desperately that I'm wrong.

Rick and I sat down and arrived at a game plan we think we can live with, for all the possibilities; we wouldn't be able to make a spot decision like that, so we decided to figure it all out ahead of time. Won't make it any easier though.

Today is going to be a very, very, very long day.

I'd made an appointment at a MUY posh cat clinic for both Bear (13) and Emma (5) a few weeks ago, and endured a lengthy interview in the process, during which I stated my concerns about Bear's health. Most prominent were his reluctance to groom himself, and (in my opinion) a little more weight loss than I felt comfortable with. He was otherwise in decent health. We had to wait almost a month for an appointment.

Emma came out fine - although she wedged herself into completely inaccessible spots in the office and needed to be pried out by the vet tech, everybody there loved her because she was so docile and pretty and totally non-aggressive.

Bear peed himself in the carrier on the way over, and that scared me, because he's never done that before. It freaked him out too.

The vet scared us even more with dire warnings about him and that we brought him in just in time because he has approximately 38.4 seconds to live. (Okay, that last bit was my exaggeration, but only just.)

A thousand dollars' worth of same-day tests later and we're looking at an x-ray of a bladder completely filled with sharp stones. So he's on antibiotics, because he appeared to have just started bleeding - possibly because of all the intense palpations the vet was doing - but he also needed an IV of fluids, a potassium supplement, and, to my relief, pain killers. Finally we have a vet who believes that cats feel pain and deserve to have the pain eased.

We go in with him again on Monday for an ultrasound - she's concerned about his kidneys and thyroid too - and then we'll see. He'll probably need surgery, so there's that to look forward to. In the meantime, it's pill popping three times a day, and he's such a suspicious bugger it's hard to pin him down to get the pills in him. JOY.

Since we got back from the vet, he's put Emma on notice; no more ambushes, no more stalking, no more rough play. Every time he goes past her, if she rises up even a little, he growls at her for her to stay where she is and leave him the fuck alone. Nothing demonstrates how sick he is better than this. He has never been badass before. Fortunately she tends to fold in submission under any kind of confrontation, so all is well. She's a little freaked out, but she'll be fine.

Now that he has actual, visible symptoms - blood in the box, intestinal disturbance, obvious discomfort - and I feel like the crappiest kitty mom in the world. We really did get him there just in time. All it took was a firm-handed exam to get him into full-blown distress.

Poor Bear. Fortunately everything else came out clear; good teeth, strong heart, excellent blood pressure, good weight (although badly distributed probably because of his illness), so if we can get those stones out of him and clear up the infection, hopefully everything will be fine.




::worry::