So, this morning, Bart can hardly walk. Not a good thing. He’s getting better as the morning goes along, but I’m concerned. He’s been diagnosed with a heart murmur and athritis. I’d like to be able to do something to make him more comfortable. He’s been on glucosamine/chondrointen for a while now and it’s helped, but I don’t know why he’s having problems this morning. Maybe Benny hurt him, jumping on his back and biting him.
His appointment is at 10:45 this morning. I hope it’s nothing along the lines of “he’s gonna die”, but “give him this and he’ll feel better”. I see x-rays and bloodwork in his near future.
Then, we have Pancho. Pancho has a big raw spot on the back of one of his front legs, in front of his paw pad. I’m thinking it might have started out as an abscess from a cat fight (we had quite a few of those a couple of weeks ago) and he’s just not letting it heal, he licks and licks and licks it. I’ve tried Bactoderm, but he licks that off. I’m hoping the vet has an idea. His appointment is at 9:30 tomorrow.
Then Oliver has a followup for bloodwork tomorrow.
One of these weeks, I don’t want to leave the house, not once.
UPDATE:
Well, we’re home. No x-rays, no bloodwork. The vet pulled out the pictures from last autumn and said that Bart has the same problems now, just worse. When I pointed out the area of his back that seems more painful than normal, he shook his head and told me that Bart was in to see him back in 1993 for that same problem area. For pain relief there are three different meds that we could use, but two of them are for very, very bad pain, human drugs. The other is metacam, which we’ve already got here. He said this is the drug he’d advise at this point.
We discussed how Bart gets around. I told him this morning was pretty bad, but as he moved it got somewhat better. He asked if Bart objects to being held, I laughed. Bart really wanted up yesterday, was following me around until I picked him up and carried him. He asked about Bart jumping up on things, does he have problems there? Well, he was in bed last night and this morning, he jumps on the sofas without too much of a problem.
Today’s diagnosis is pain due to arthritis. I did ask the vet if Bart’s arthritis might be due to his polydactylism and he said “oh, most definitely. Those extra toes change the way he stands, carries himself, just about everything, it places more stress on the joints”.
He mentioned that when Bart had bloodwork taken last year the results were “awesome” so at this point, he’s not worried about liver damage. Bart will get .2CC three days in a row of metacam, then off of it until his next bad episode. The vet feels that right now, the little aches and pains he has are all hitting at once. As well as the metacam, Bart also has to have some fish oil in his kibble. Vet says that studies show this is a great help for arthritis conditions. Just don’t give him too much or he’ll get diarrhea.
Since we’ve been back, Bart ate some kibble with fish oil (broke it open with my teeth, yish), got his metacam (best given with food) and now, he’s all stretched out on the futon, ready for his afternoon snooze.
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