Healing Well

Photo: My Cutie Pies! Sharing the new bed :)

I'm pleased to say I've continued to not have to take painkillers. Most excellent! Plus, I've been really active this week. Much has been happening including a number of intense rain storms (this is California's rainy season - we need the rain, too!) passing through. And, so, with our property situated in the country this means there is always something to do.

Like raking and removing gunky redwood needles and mud off the gravel driveway. If this gets mixed in with the gravel then the road can turn to mush. Actually, this is the first time I have had to do this. We had someone use a piece of machinery that moved on tracks rather than on regular wheels. And this, unfortunately, tore up areas of the road and loosened the surface a bit. It then rained and created a reason for me to exercise my upper body ;) (In addition to this, the next day I was also channeling water off the road so that it ran away from the houses and down to the creek.)

My dear friend Raphael arrived on the scene as I was halfway through the road job, he proceeded to help out. Thank goodness! The next day I was rather sore in my chest, and then I remembered, oh yeah, I was raking heavy wet stuff off the road! (I got a blister on my hand so know I really was pushing it a bit). Only just five weeks since the surgery and I'm pretty much doing everything normally - good, eh?!

The surgeon, in his after care handout notes, descibes the scar tissue as been about 40% tensile strength at six weeks of what it will be at one year. The surgeon also remarked to Ron, that, if I was more active soon after surgery then I would have more pain in the short term. But in the the long term I would reap the benefits and be stronger physically and will have full range of motion sooner. Well it looks like it would seem so.

More rain is forcast for tomorrow. Our reservoirs and aquifers are replenishing themselves. This is so good as we had our 7th or 8th dryest winter last year. And we only get rain in the winter here. Where would we be without water? (And love, and friends, and chocolate, and...., and....., and.....)

P.S. Wildman continues to be very healthy! Seems like he just had an upper respiratory infection and got run down and dehydrated. So, no thoracic surgery and tons of pain (him and us) and mucho dollars spent! Sometimes low tech is good ;) We do know now that he has a weird something in his lung. That's okay. Weird "somethings" are part of life. We'll keep a close eye on him and do further testing later.

I'm Back From Retreat

Photo: Just in case you need to know where the "Secret" Bunker is located.

I actually got back from retreat earlier than I expected as one of my cats was possibly very sick. I had been concerned with Wildman (you can see his photo in earlier posts) as he had not been acting "quite right", seeming more agitated before I left for retreat. Cats can be a hard read when it comes to illness, and unusual behaviour is one clue that things might not be okay with them.

My wonderful husband took my "little darling" to the vet, while I was on retreat, as he decided that he wasn't eating (and Wildman is a veritable "chow hound"). Ron hoped that it was nothing and the vet would give him the all clear and then Ron could just call me and leave a message saying Wildman was fine.

Alas, this didn't happen. After checking his urine, they found him to be severely dehydrated ("off the charts" was their response). They pulled blood to check various other health indicators (Wildman lived up to his name and turned into a wild boy while they poked and prodded him). And then they decided to do a chest x-ray. Unfortunately, this very unexpectedly (sound familiar?) found a large mass on the film. The vet checked it out with another internist plus a surgeon. They were all at a loss to explain this weird looking mass.

The next course of action was to do an ultrasound to check for lymphoma. And then after that the next treatment was to do exploratory thoracic surgery that entailed cracking open the breastbone to get access to that area of the lung (they couldn't do a needle aspiration as it is too close to his heart, aorta and other important goodies). Plus, this surgery would entail severe pain, hospitalization, 6 to 8 weeks of recovery plus cost thousands of dollars. Ugh! Poor baby Wildman!!

Anyway, it was at this point that Ron called me from the vets office. I decided to come home as poor Ron absolutely couldn't be expected to make these major decisions and care for a possibly very sick kitty.

I am thankful to have had quite a bit of experience in dealing with sick animals. Both my own, and numerous foster animals through the animal shelters and animal rescue. I know how to give fluids, food, medications etc. to keep many animals alive.

So this is what I did with the Wildman. They had already administered fluids subcutaneously (sub-Q) so this helped with the dehydration. I decided to take a low tech approach and just see what happened.

Wildman has lived with a chronic sinus infection from when he was very sick as my 2 week old foster kitten (he nearly died; 2 of his litter mates did die). He had recently had one of his many episodes with what I call his "Snotty Nose Syndrome", a very technical term(!).

He usually recovers by himself quite well. I don't give him antibiotics unless I really have to. He went through every one available when he was young. When I took him up to UC Davis teaching hospital a number of years ago they remarked that I had tried everything and there wasn't any other drug for him. This "snotty" time around is when I thought he might be taking a little longer to recover but he still seemed his cheery self (he loves life).

I gave him another round of fluids the next day. He had resumed eating. And so I cancelled the ultra sound and just waited and observed him closely, both eating, fluid intake and energy levels.
And thank goodness he has responded really well and is now eating and drinking normally. And is back to teasing his sister, Arabella, and "thumping" his cat tree (uses his back feet :) Triple Yay!!!

What of the strange mass in his lung?! Well, could be anything. Maybe he'll decline again. I did talk to another vet, who, when I said surely there should be other respiratory symptoms that would make a cat stop eating and drinking, so could the two not be related? She did reply that the lung mass could be incidental. Well, we shall see. I had an appointment lined up for UC Davis on Monday. I'll wait on this and see how our Wildman continues.

Ahh! How nice it is to not talk about me for once. But wait, maybe I should let you know about what happened to me....... nah, next post ;)

(NB - For Bliss: Maybe the strange "mass" on Wildman's x-ray is when I stuck the stomach tube down the wrong way. You showed me, during one of those late night emergency visits, how to use one when he was a very sick tiny kitten and I was desperately fighting for his life (and he was desperately fighting me every time I "tubed" him (for 2 weeks/4x a day). And, maybe, this resulted in the scarring of lung tissue aka strange lung "mass"?!!)