which do you want first? the bad news or the freaking awful shit?
i will just start at the beginning and go thru the day.
al and halo had their vet appointments first thing this morning. halo looks great and is happy as can be and has put on 2 pounds since last week, but she is still dying.
al has a tumor (probably an aggressive adenosarcoma) in his anal gland. it is too small an area to get good margins if we surgically remove it so he would need chemo and radiation post surgery. al was born in 1994..that makes him 19 sometime this year. he is in pretty good shape so if that tumor was somewhere easier to clean out where he wouldn't need followup treatements..i would most likely give it shot. but i am not putting him thru chemo or radiation and without it there is no point in doing the surgery.
he will probably have a few decent months left of feeling quite well. these tumors spread to the lungs, the liver and bones so we will watching him carefuly for those.
he doesn't know the tumor is there yet and i only know cuz the other cancer sniffing dogs gave me the heads up to get him checked. this so sucks, al is an icon around here...i don't even want to think of him gone.
i brought al and halo home and ran out to chilliwack to pickup CC (the 14 yr old sheltie) she is a very sweet, elderly cruelty seizure who suffers from seperation anxiety. she has poor vision and rotten teeth. i will get her in for a dental sometime next week. the little chi is not signed over yet..maybe tomorrow..maybe not.
i set her up in the mp room for now...i don't want to move her to my room yet because fletcher is not well.
i booted shep out of his appointment this afternoon because he is the most stable of the three going in. pokey and frankie really needed to be seen. fletch had to take sheps place because he started to crash this afternoon. when i was coming back from chilliwack, erin called me and said he was lethargic and his gums were really pale. so i got home and loaded up the two cats early and grabbed fletcher too to take in.
the cats were both dehydrated...frankie may be seizuring from a tumor on her brain and pokey is just not kicking the kidney infection. they both had sc fluids, appetite stimulents and more antibiotics.
fletch is absolutely breaking my heart..this may be the end of his road. but it is not his hemophilia that is currently threatening his life..his blood count today was actually improved. it is his kidneys that look like they have totally crapped out. his blood pressure probably bottomed out when he had his surgical bleed and it looks like it irrepairably screwed up his kidneys. we knew his kidneys were not great but i thought tht was the least of his problems. i thought the hemophilia would knock him out first.
we had to make some decisions today...rehydrating him with IV's was a big risk as he might bleed out around the cathetor. even just doing blood work was risky as was trying to rehydrate him under the skin. in the end i opted to risk both of the blood work and the sc fluids..if he bled out from those then so be it. but i wanted to know how bad his kidneys were and i wanted him to stay alive until the bloodwork came back.
anyway..i brought him home..his results will be in tomorrow. this may be the last night i get to cuddle him and his last night to know he is loved.
he did eat some dinner tonight and i watered it down well to get some more fluids in him. i can't help hoping that this is not the beginning of his end. i was prepared to lose him some time in the future when he ran into something hard or sharp. but i am not prepared to lose him tomorrow to something i was not even really worrying about.
please god let hope float for a while longer for fletch.
Awwwww shit......