So What Do I Do?

Haven't posted for awhile, and what I have to post about now I'd rather not write.

I'm sitting on the two-seat sofa with Llewellyn next to me, and he's not well at all.  Around the first of the month he threw up his regular kibble (whole), then started turning up his nose at it altogether.  Prior to that he'd been having trouble eliminating, but I thought maybe he'd gotten into the cat box and picked up a bug.  But when he didn't want to eat . . .  Got a vet appointment for the Thursday following (the 7th, the soonest they had), and they told me to put him on chicken and rice in the meantime.

He ate that fine, and everything looked all right at his appointment.  I just needed to feed him more and get him fattened up again; he was too skinny.  They also gave me an antibiotic as they thought he might have a gastric infection.

Kept him on the chicken and rice and changed his kibble.  Fine in general, though he wasn't keen on the increased amounts (this is a dog who left toothmarks in the metal lid of a scented candle).  But last Wednesday his stool got tarry and gradually there were fewer and fewer things I could get him to eat.

Saturday night I made him a batch of hushpuppies and that's the last thing of any significance he's had.

Got him in to the vet's today.  X-rays and sonogram clean.  But they did a comprehensive bloodwork panel and it shows that he's severely anemic.  The doctor is of the opinion that Llewellyn either has an ulcer-- or it's a stomach tumor-- i.e., cancer.

They sent me home with more pills.  For what it's worth, for he's still refusing to eat.  He's lost two pounds in the past 11 days.  And he was a lean dog already.

Vet says if he doesn't start eating I'm going to have to make a Decision.  Crap.  How is it he's still so strong he won't open his jaws for me, but so weak it was a wonder that I found him upstairs with me this morning?

It's not helping going online and reading about miracle cures.  Do I get this stuff and force it down him on the chance it'll mean a breakthrough?  Or do I leave him in peace . . . for whatever time he has left?

Sometimes, when the mood takes me, I bunk down on the two-seat sofa and spend the night sleeping with the dog in the living room.  I think that's what I'll do tonight.

She Seems All Right

Here is Rhadwen on the floor of my study this evening.

Usually, this pose means she's feeling fine and is at peace with the world.

Hope it's the same now. She seems all right. She's been taking her ulcer medicine on schedule. Not willingly, but resignedly. No more blood thrown up, that I've been able to see.

Watch and wait is all I can do.

But-- touch wood!-- things look promising just now.

Rhadwen Visits the Vet

I don't know what the tone of this post should be. Maybe let's stick with straight reporting, and let the spin develop with events.

Late yesterday morning, I was upstairs with all of my four-footed kids when Rhadwen, my ten-and-a-half-year-old calico started to hawk up a hair ball.

Not on the wooden hall floor, if you please, Wennie, even if it's not yet refinished. I picked her up and deposited her on the bathroom floor.

She continued to kakk, and brought up-- not a hairball-- but what looked like clear stomach juices tinged with blood.

Then she squeezed back behind the toilet and did it again.

Not a lot, either time, but against the white vinyl it was appalling.

We do not mess around with animals bringing up blood in this house. My late lamented shaggy terrier Maddie died four years ago of some mysterious blood disease, and it began-- or rather, my awareness of it began-- with blood on the bathroom floor.

I called the vet and got her slotted in as an emergency case early yesterday afternoon.

She didn't mind going into her carrier at all. She didn't mind the ride in the car, or the wait in the waiting room.

The examination? She minded that very, very much.

Cold plastik fing nawt gud bed! Ai getz doan rite noaw kthxbye!!

Ten-point-eight pounds. Good grief. I thought she was up to fifteen at least, she's so big. Is it really all fur?

Poky-tempachure thingee goez where??? DO NAWT WANT!!!

Between us, the vet tech and I were able to hold my yowling, spitting cat still just long enough to verify that her temperature was normal.

Then the vet came to do the examination, armed with a heavy towel. Oh, no, Rhadwen was not happy with that, no, she was not. The fighting and clawing started even before the palpations did. I have no idea how the vet could tell there were no areas of unusual tenderness on her tummy, but that's what she said.

Questions. Was she eating her food? Yes. Was she sluggish or lethargic? Obviously not. Could she have eaten anything she shouldn't have? Hm, Thursday afternoon I was sanding some woodwork; maybe she stepped in some of the dust when I wasn't looking and licked it off her toes . . . Could she have gotten into any chemicals? I gave them the name of the wood stripper I've been using, but doubted it could be that, since it evaporates very quickly and she'd never shown an interest in it before. Does she go outside, and could she have eaten something out there? Yes, she does, in the backyard only, and maybe she could have, but nothing I'd noticed.

"Her eyes are bright and she's well-hydrated. We'll take x-rays to see if she's ingested anything, and call about that stripper."

They left us in the room together. Rhadwen took her stand under a chair and stared at me balefully.

Reenter the vet and the vet tech, this time with a muzzle.

O. MAI. GAWD.

Ai weel kil u!! Ai will kiel u wid debastadieng dedness!! Awl ov Uuzz!!

They took her away, her yowls reechoing down the corridor.

Soon she was back, the muzzle askew.

"Any possibility of it?" I asked.

"I don't know yet," the tech replied. "We'll try setting up the x-ray machine first. Then we'll come back for her."

"Should I come back and hold her?"

"We think we can do it. Maybe."

Eventually, the vet and the vet tech returned, got a better grip on my fighting struggling scratching clawing spitting howling yowling sweet calico baby, and bore her back to the x-ray machine. Through the closed door her cries reecho'd and I wondered if there might be more blood on the floor today-- from the vet.

Before long the tech brought her back, and the vet soon joined us. "We got one. The x-ray shows no foreign bodies in her digestive system, and no sign of tumors or any other abnormality. It doesn't look like the chemical stripper could be involved-- she'd have caustic burns around her mouth, and she doesn't. If she'd got into rat poison--"

"Oh, no! That's what they thought might have happened to my terrier that died, though I have no idea where she could have gotten any!"

"Well, if it were rat poison, she wouldn't be throwing up blood, it'd be coming out elsewhere."

"Yes. I know. That's what happened to Maddie."

"So that's really not a possibility. And since she's eating and drinking and she's strong enough to have nearly killed us back there--"

"I'm sorry!"

"That's all right. We'll treat the symptoms and give her some ulcer medicine. Keep an eye on her and if there's any negative change, bring her in right away."

They told me what to look for, and sent us home with the medicine in a little bottle and a syringe to give it to her with, every eight hours. Cherry flavored liquid, which is ridiculous for a cat-- why can't it taste like tuna?

Rhadwen's been taking her dose the past day and a half by now. Not happily, not willingly, but getting it down. (We'd have an easier time with it if the dog wouldn't interfere.) She seems very much herself, and if she's kakked up any more blood she's done it someplace I haven't yet found it.

God willing, she hasn't at all.

So I am keeping my eye on her. I hope it was only something like sanding dust that she licked off her toes and it irritated her tummy. I don't like mysterious illnesses but this one can just go away quietly and never poke its nose into our lives again. I do not want my big furry girl to be sick; no, I want her around and healthy a long long long time.

Scenes from a Convalescence

FBI Update

Llewellyn and I are home from the regular vet's, and yes, the Foreign Body he Ingested on Friday was a trimming from the wool fabric I'm making a suit out of. Pieces of it were in the stool sample he produced this morning, that I brought in for analysis.

He's been eating his bland diet mini-meals hungrily and keeping them down, and was free from pain when the vet palpated his abdomen.

He's definitely acting like his old self-- including barking lustily at the other dogs in the vet's waiting room! Llewellyn, hush!

So is there a moral here?

Maybe that I should have been more diligent and finished this sewing a couple weeks ago. Or that I should be a better housekeeper and vacuum my rugs more often. Or that I should be more preemptive, and have fed him peroxide in water (the vet recommends milk, to get him to drink it voluntarily) to make him throw up the mystery object right after he gulped it down.

But I guess the true moral is, be ready for anything. Dogs is dogs, and if they take a mind to make a meal out of something, they will.

Scary, Not Cute

After midnight last night I had to take my dog Llewellyn to the emergency vet's.

Yesterday evening, as I was about to drive into town to go to the symphony, I took him out to the alley to do his business. His business, if you'll pardon the specificity, was yellow, runny, and strained.

Less than five minutes later, he threw up his breakfast (which he'd eaten nearly eleven hours before) in the front room. All of it. Recognizable. Undigested.

I debated with myself. Should I stay, or go? But I was dressed up, I had my ticket, and dogs throw up all the time. He'd probably eaten something that'd disagreed with him. Now it was out of his system and he'd be fine.

I filled his supper bowl, threw a bath towel over the mess, and left.

It was a good concert. Great music, well-played. Though I was distracted at times, wondering how my doggie was doing.

I didn't hang around after, but drove straight home, hoping I'd find Llewellyn to be his old cheerful self and his food bowl empty.

Neither were the case. He was mopey and lethargic. He lay down in the front room and wouldn't even look at the nice homemade chicken broth I now put down for him. He wasn't interested in the bit of nice, fragrant gooshy kitten food I tried to tempt him with. He just lay there with his dry nose, breathing heavily.

Oh, BabyDog, what's wrong?

When I called him and he acted like he couldn't get up and come to me even if he wanted to, that was it. It was time to call the 24-hour vet.

Frustrating, but there still are no 24-hour veterinarians in my county. Nearest one was nearly an hour away--I'd been there before with my late dog Maddie. The receptionist there said it sounded as if I'd better bring him, and I agreed.

Llewellyn seemed much better by the time we got to the clinic. Smiling, sociable, with tail wagging and no longer between his legs. Vet said the adrenalin rush of a car ride and a visit to a new place can do that.

She took my history of the case, along with something else I'd remembered. Friday, up in my study, Llewellyn snatched something off the floor and began to gobble it up. By the time I'd rotated my chair around, he had his mouth closed around it and wouldn't drop it and wouldn't let me pry his teeth open so I could make him let it go.

The strange thing is that he didn't just swallow whatever it was down and stare at me grinning at what he'd just gotten away with. No, he'd had to gulp, gulp, gulp to get it down his gullet.

I told the vet last night at it might have been a live stinkbug. Or a stray jellybean egg or foil-wrapped chocolate egg from when one of the kittens knocked the Easter basket over a few days ago. I couldn't think of anything else.

But after the x-rays came back, I saw that there well may have been something else. The lateral film shows something that just possibly could be a piece of fabric, about five inches long, in his small intestine.

Yes, I have been sewing up in my study. Yes, I have been trimming seam allowances. But why on earth would my dog gobble up a scrap? He's never been one to devour nonedibles-- unless they have something edible on them. But there it was on the x-ray.

Or maybe not. Vet said, "The line is very faint. It might also just be the way his intestines are lying. We'll need to take another x-ray tomorrow or the next day to make sure."

They gave him some antibiotics and anti-gas medication to reduce the slight bloat in his poor empty tummy. They injected a quantity of water, like a camel's hump, under his skin to alleviate his dehydration. Then they sent him home with me with a long list of instructions and warnings and caveats for the next few days. And it's a good thing they were listed, since by then (3:00 AM) my brain was refusing to take anything in.

So today I'm observing his condition. Fasting first, the remainder of last night and through this morning. Then a little bit of water and bland food-- actually just some tinned water-pack chicken breast around the pills he has to take. He's held that down so far, thank God, so now I have permission to feed him a teeny, tiny serving of chicken and white rice. And if he doesn't throw that up, another teeny, tiny serving of the same four hours later. And so on, for the next three or four days.

And watch his stool to see if anything comes through, and schedule the followup x-ray with my vet if he continues to eat and do well into tomorrow. Or bundle him into the car and get him down to the emergency vet's again if things go wrong.

If it is a piece of cloth, it could bind his intestines. They could even rupture and spill sepsis into his gut. Before that could happen, he'd have to have surgery.

Thus far, he seems more interested and lively . . . wants to eat, even though I mustn't let him till the scheduled time. Bossing the cats around and barking and jumping when someone came to the door. So I'll go cook him his bit of supper, and hope-- hope--all goes well.