Saturday, October 24, started out pretty normal. In his morning meds, we gave Scout an appetite stimulant and a Zofran. We do this about once a month to keep his appetite up, as the chemo can wear his appetite down. He was fine all day, his normal self, purring and affectionate. About 3pm or so, I opened up a can of salmon and gave him some. Nothing new there either. I've given him canned salmon on occasion for most of his life. He was fine for the rest of the afternoon and most of the evening.
Until 9:30.
That's when he threw up the first time. A bunch of food. Major grossness. At first, we thought it was hairball related, because it looked compacted, but it wasn't. He seemed ok, so we didn't think much of it. We figured we would give him another anti-nausea in the morning.
Then he threw up again at 10:15, so we bumped up our schedule and gave him the Zofran then. He was not happy that he had to be handled. He went off to hide behind some boxes in solitude. Things were quiet until 11:30, when he threw up once more (just water this time), but he ran off to the litter pan. He didn't make it. He had diarrhea. I didn't realize this until about midnight when I went to the bathroom.
So we packed him up and took him to the emergency vet. We were pretty sure it was food related, most likely the salmon. We had given the cats some of the salmon last week, mixing it in with their other food, and PJ got a bit of an upset tummy in the middle of the week and refused to eat it any more, so I stopped that. Anyway, things were going really slow at the emergency vet. Apparently, they were understaffed in the vet tech department, so all the blood tests were running behind. When we got there, we had to wait at the receptionist's desk for at least five minutes before anyone even showed up. After we filled out the necessary paperwork and gave them copies of the reports from Scout's last visit to Dr. E, we waited.
For an hour.
Scout got a little bit of sleep while we waited, so we think that he was starting to feel a little bit better. When we got in to the room and were able to talk to the vet tech, we had to explain the confusion that is his pill schedule. She was going to take his weight and such, but decided against it when he growled at her when she opened his carrier. She looked at us nervously, and we explained that he is a grumpy kitty when he has to be handled, especially by medical types. We waited about another fifteen minutes for the vet to come into the room. We told her the whole story again, and, heeding our warning, she took Scout in the back for his exam.
And the screaming began.
That was our second clue that he was starting to feel better. About fifteen minutes after that, the vet came back in, and gave us two options: we could treat the symptoms, which would involve giving him some subcutaneous fluids and a shot of antinausea meds, or we could run some blood tests to see if there was something else. Her opinion was that it was just an upset tummy, and he didn't need the blood tests, but she let us decide. We agreed to the first option, so she went back to supervise the subcu fluids.
And the screaming resumed.
(By the way, I am referring to Scout.)
On his treatment summary, it describes the subcutaneous fluids like this: Your pet has been given fluids subcutaneously (under the skin). Although you will notice an area of swelling where the fluids have been given, this procedure is generally painless and well tolerated by the patient.
Yeah.
Scout was not tolerating anything, not even a little bit.
We're not sure, but we suspect they might have had to put him in the bag, which would explain why he screamed pretty much the whole time he was back there. When his treatment was done, they were more than happy to hand him back over to us. He fell asleep pretty quickly in his carrier, so his nausea must have eased. I think he slept most of the way home.
We got home around 3:30a.m. dead tired. Scout was grumpy and hissed and growled at PJ and went off to find his own space where no one would bother him.
Sunday morning he was feeling a lot better. He at a little bit of food for breakfast, and purred some and gave me a couple of kisses.
We'll probably send Dr. E an email to find out what she wants to do in terms of seeing Scout. He is supposed to go back to see her in three weeks. The emergency vet will fax them the notes from his visit so she knows what happened.
But for right now he feels better and that's all that matters to us!
