(extracted from a 750 Words entry)
A couple of weeks ago, I had taken in Haley for her annual checkup, and a few week beforehand I had noticed that she had not been eating as much as she had normally. She usually would devour half or all of a three ounce can of fFancy Feast, but a started to only licking up the liquid and a cursory amount of solid food.
Armando had been a few months late for his annual appointment, and he was due for shots, so I had taken him in at the same time. As expected, he was quite a healthy cat, although the vet noted that his teeth were much worse than Haley’s, even though he was a decade younger.
Haley unfortunately had lost almost a pound-and-a-half since her last checkup a year-and-a-half ago. She did not exhibit any physically symptons, but that level of weight loss was definitely concerning. He reccomended a full blood panel to eliminate metabolic causes such as diabetes or thyroid problems.
The blood panel was normal, although it had shown signs of early kidney disease. However, the vet did not think mild kidney disease would cause such weight loss. He reccomended xrays to search for other causes.
I did not have a car available for the second visit, but AC has Thursdays off now, so she came by in the morning after dropping her kids off at day care. We spent quite a bit of time talking before we drove to the vet and dropped Piglet off for her xrays.
AC offered to drive me to pick her up when she was done in the afternoon, but I wanted to try out car2go’s shared car service and I did not want to bother her later. I picked up a shared car near the Columbia City light rail station to retrieve Ate Piglet.
The xray results were not encouraging. She had a lot of issues, which is not surprising for a cat of her age (approximately fifteen years). She had evidence of arthritis in the spine and other areas. She had “thickening” of the intestines which could indicate intestinal problems like a tumor or inflammatory bowerl disease. There was also an area in the lungs which seemed concerning.
The vet the said that I could start emprical treatment for possible inflammatory bowel disease and consider getting an ulatrasound to check out the intestines and chest area. They did not have a radiologist in house, but they did have someone who comes in for them. I could also find someone else to do the ultrasound myself.
I did not know the best time to schedule the ultrasound, so I decided to go ahead an treat the possible bowel symptoms while I worked on getting the ultrasound done. Treating the bowel issues basically consisted of a special cat food plus pills (I think an antibiotic in this case). Changes in medicinal regimen could them be altered as conditions warrented.
All of these vet visits and getting back of results and whatnot did take time, and poor piglet was clearly not herself.
Amanda went ahead and contacted our friends JI and SP who are both vets. Steve also happens to be a veterinary radiologist. Normally, I would not talk to my friends about “work” related issues, except in the abstract, but this was a serious situation which Amanda and I had little experience.
As fortune woud have it, SP apparently had just bought a portable ultrasound machine. He has been working for a company that just reads films and whatnot, so he has been working from home analyzing xrays and ultrasounds and whatever. He apparently bought the ultrasound machine so that he could do mercenary radiologist work (similar to whomever my vet has coming in to do their ultrasounds). He still have some sort of noncompete agreement with his previous employer, so he cannot do competing radiologist work in the Seattle area, so I think he has been going up to Everett every now and then. I guess his noncompete runs out sometime this year.
As an aside: JI is apparently annoyed that the ultrasound machine cost more than their new car, but SP insisted that it will “pay for itself”. Which I personally believe.
SP said just bring Haley to their house sometime, and he would do the ultrasound, so Amanda took her in before going to work one day.
To be continued…