Erik

[cellio]

I talked with the surgeon. Erik is not coming home tonight. Probably tomorrow.

Biopsy report: severe cholangial hepatitis, severe pancreatitis, and by the way they found e coli in his gallbladder but IIUC the drugs they're giving him are knocking that down. Usually you starve e coli, he said, but (in his words) "we need to keep pushing the groceries into him".

White blood cell count is normal. He's anemic, but apparently that's normal given his condition. (I don't know if that means normal for this surgery, normal for one of the conditions he has, or what.)

He said probably the way to treat the pancreatitis is with steroids, but that can't start until he's healed up from the surgery. There's nothing we can do right now.

He was already being treated for the hepatitis; dunno if there's a dosage change coming or what. I need to review all of this with his regular vet, of course.

He declined to make a call on prognosis for all of this.

Meanwhile, I've talked with my manager about ways to accommodate the need for feedings every six hours (for a week or so). I'd been assuming mid-day runs home, but asked optimistically about taking over a small unused room and just bringing him in with me. (Probably won't work, but we need to ask the powers that be.) He suggested working half-days from home; I'll have to see if I can make that work.

Comments

I have cats too...

[sfromriverdale.livejournal.com]

I've had cats too and this sound scarey but do-able. Believe it or not it doesn't sound fatal. In other words there is a light at the end of this tunnel. It will be very taxing on your purse indeed, and you'll spend many hour by little Eriks side but he will pull through. I wouldn't bring him to work. the travel will be too stressing for him and he'll get sicker. do the half days from home it will work better you and for Erik. I've had a similar situation recently when my daisy got really sick really fast after her teeth were cleaned. I knew it was and infection and all I could do was get her to take her antibiotics, get her to eat, and stay by her side. She was so sick I really thought I was going to loose her that very night, but if I took her to an animal emergency room the stress would have mader her even worse. So I just stayed with her through the night, got her to eat her medicine, eat food that didn't hurt her painful gums and by the next night she was doing much better. He sounds like he'll get through this even though this is all very scary. You'll see, but in the mean time I'll be praying for you.

Re: I have cats too...

[cellio]

Thanks for the encouragement. He seems a lot better tonight than when I saw him Monday, so I have hopes that things will be back to normal before too long.

I'm going to try taking him to work tomorrow and judge from there. The commute is 15 minutes by car, which shouldn't be too bad (the trip from the clinic was about 25 minutes and he didn't complain). I think periodic human contact in a strange place might beat being left alone at home all day (isolated from the other cats for safety), but I won't know until I try it. If it seems to be going badly I'll take him home mid-day.

Working from home is doable but somewhat challenging, and we're in the middle of a release cycle right now. But we can do this a day at a time; Friday is a short day anyway because of Shabbat, so I might be able to just leave him at home then, and then there's the whole weekend. Things could be very different by Monday.

I'm glad Daisy pulled through. That must have been scary!

Re: I have cats too...

[sfromriverdale.livejournal.com]

It was. I prayed really hard for her that night. Thank You God that she was alright. She is only 9 and I'm not ready for her to die yet.