I took Rachel the cat to a new vet yesterday. She's an old cat now - at least 10, maybe as old as 13 and she has been pretty stiff and reluctant to jump or even walk far. So in she went for a geriatric check up.
The vet is nice & close, has very convenient hours and was recommended by a couple people. He listened well, took good care of Rachel, didn't push anything. We decided to take an x-ray of her which showed fairly advanced arthritis in her spine, just ahead of her hips. Two discs are completely gone & so 3 vertebrae are rubbing against each other. There is also a little arthritis in her spine just near shoulders.
It's pretty much exactly what I was expecting and the main reason I went in was to discuss some pain relievers for this problem.
What I was not counting on was that the x-ray showed that her kidneys are abnormally small. And since most of the pain relievers are quite harsh on kidneys, she may not be able to handle them.
Sigh.
She also has a bad cavity. Double sigh. She had a dental almost 3 years ago, during which some of her rotted teeth were removed. I was hoping that would be the end of it because she really didn't do well with the general. In fact, she had partial paralysis a day afterwards & I suspect she had a blood clot lodged in her spine. She recovered quickly (though she spent a night at emerg for observation) but I'm not really keen to do that again. On the other hand, dental pain & infection are not something to be ignored. Argh.
She also has an enlarged thyroid. Triple sigh.
We took blood yesterday & tried for a urine sample but her bladder was not full enough.
I'll get the blood results today so hopefully we'll see how her organs are functioning & that will give us some idea on what's ahead.
I did have on quibble with the vet. He's badly in need of a Bad Breath Alert! Don't you just hate that? Luckily I'll be getting the results today by phone so I won't have to avoid breathing when speaking with the guy, though I guess eventually I'll have to go back in.
In other news, I'm a visible minority.
Married People Outnumbered for First Time: Census
And some of us are members of an even more visible minority.
Genus: married, with children. Species: stay at home mother.
4 comments:
Hope Rachel can be comfortable.
Tom and I laughed over the news yesterday. Not only am I married and a stay at home mother, but I have an unseemly number of children (which in hs'ing circles I've gotten used to describing as "only three" lol) whom I -- gasp -- homeschool.
Why start marching to the same drummer at this point in our lives :)
Poor Rachel. I hope the vet finds something good for her (Perhaps you could offer him a peppermint?).
I don't have any idea of the ratio of married to unmarried in the U.S., but that is certainly a surprising statistic.
I do hope Rachel can be kept comfortable.
The other day we realized that our geriatric cat is "only" 16 -- we had been thinking she was 18. She reminds us of my grandmother, who was hovering near death's door for at least 40 years, and finally actually died in her 90s.
This is our 3rd cat to live at least this long, and it doesn't get any easier. We just keep discovering new things that can go wrong.
I'm sorry to hear about your kitty.
I'm in the same genus and species as you. I work from home, too, though. I wonder if that makes me even more of anomaly? Married, work from home, homeschooling, homesteading, locavore ...?
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