During dinner time on Thursday, I got a call from our vet. All of Maya's blood work and vomit analysis came back. And, of course, we know she has fatty liver disease, which is treatable. But her bloodwork came back showing severe intestinal problems. It could just be an infection due to IBD or it could be intestinal cancer. The only way to know would be to spend the money to biopsy, which we won't do because it's fairly traumatic for an elderly cat and she's already anemic. She has a bacterial infection that we found in the vomit. She's also not absorbing folate, so I need to go pick up some today at the pharmacy to add into her daily regime.
I'm force feeding her four times a day. In the a.m. when we first get up, I give her a Denosyl tablet on an empty stomach. I wait until 8 or 8:30 a.m. and then I give her a half a tab of Clavamox and then do her first force feeding which features 30-50ml of prescription AD food with some lactulose mixed in. Then I feed her every 3 hours after that with a varying amount of medicines mixed in. When I had to do with with Clawdio 8 years ago, he was a mess about it. I'd have to hunt him down under the bed or in hiding places. I'm pretty sure he and I spent 3 weeks in tears. But he's still alive and doing well. Maya, being the laid back cat she is, just sits there and takes it and never hides.
What I can hope is that I'm able to get her fatty liver disease and bacteria infection under control through the feedings and that in the next 2-4 weeks she will begin to eat by herself. If that happens, then we can put her on a steroid to help with the IBD. The worst meds we give her are a liquid antibiotic that she gets twice a day to help fight the bacterial infection. It makes her foam at the mouth. Dr. Mary recommended that I clean her up and then feed her to help get the yucky taste out of her mouth.
So, we're treating what we know we can treat, because the truth is that if she has intestinal cancer, there's nothing we could do about it any way. Animals, for the most part, don't usually survive very long after cancer treatment that works on humans. I learned this when I researched various types last summer when Riley got diagnosed. Her X-rays don't show any masses. So we're going to hope it's just IBD with liver issues and we'll solve them and she'll move forward. She had a very hard life before she came to live with us 10 years ago. But it's really hard to think of a life without our "Big Fluffy."
The Good News
Last night X-man had his last play date with our neighbor. We took her over to Sholem, where mothers stood about in the shallows complaining that the water was cold. I totally understood what they were saying, even though I knew the water had to be at least 80 degrees. Funny how after 5 weeks of 100 plus temperatures, 85 degrees outside feels "chilly." Thus the 80 degree pool is still "refreshing" rather than like lukewarm bathwater.
The kids had fun, and X-man wandered into a pretty much all-girl Carrie Busey night at the pool. There were some neighbors going into second grade, a couple going into first with him and they were all there. He and a kindergarten friend and Super Chloe went up and down the slides together. They "water danced." They tossed a wet football with the CB friend's little brother. We went down the raft slide and around the lazy river together. It was a great hour and a half. And X-man didn't want it to end. He walked as slowly as possible to the car. He said, "We have another 10 minutes before we get home, Mom, what can we do with Chloe until then?" It was very, very sweet. And can I say how much I love the fact that my son loved playing with the girls? He did tell me his pink and red toenail polish was chipping off and needed to be fixed up. So we'll get on that this weekend. We also gave Chloe and Ella a bag of gifts from Target that they can open every hour or so (or when they're driving Super Shanna crazy) on the 13-hour drive. In it is nothing that can melt or has small pieces. We got the idea from my aunt when X-man was two and we drove out to Baltimore. It worked really well. So I hope the girls like it.
In other good news, X-man wanted to wait up after his shower for his father to get home. MacTroll's plane was due at 9:20 p.m., so I said okay. I turned on Netflix while he was putting on his jammies and I chose a documentary on Monopoly, where we learned all kinds of fun things about X-man's favorite board game... including the fact that there is an outdoor giant monopoly game that you can play:
It's in a park, and you have to rent the pieces and costumes from the park district. But as it turns out... it's in San José, California! X-man said, "In California, can I have my birthday parties outside?" (His brain is so totally thinking about all the things we've talked about for the last few weeks.)
"Most likely, yes."
"Then I think that would be a GREAT birthday party!"
:-)
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