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Well Griff got his teeth done today. Honestly, I’ve never seen such a sight as my poor boy when I went to get him.
He wasn’t thrilled about the ride in, and it’s been probably 9 years since he’s even needed to see a vet. He went two Saturdays ago for a precheck and he did NOT want to be in that carrier again this morning.
I assume he freaked from the minute I left him. Because he was so doped up from his surgery, he still hasn’t recovered. He’s sleeping in the loo right now, he’s been down all day. When he gets up he wobbles and can’t walk straight or just plain falls. One third eyelid will not retract. I think it’s on the side they put a nerve block in, he had to have one tooth ‘crown amputated’ because it was being absorbed by the jawbone (?)…I’ve never heard of such a thing. Luckily he was purring while I was petting him a bit ago, or I’d be telephoning the on call.
I have 12 days of clindamycin to give him. I do not honestly know how I’m going to get it into him. He has to eat first. He hates anyone touching his mouth, or him in general unless he’s decided to sit in your lap and that’s when he’s feeling 100%. It’s going to be a 2 week long battle.
He was hypersalivating when I picked him up. He looked like he had rabies or brian damage or something. The vet called at 1PM and said he was ready. It takes us an hour to get into town on our snowy road, plus we bought groceries first. When I got there the receptionist/tech says, “He’s not awake yet.” I was seething under my fake smile. He definitely was not ready to come home, but I couldn’t leave him there. He was terrified. The nurse who released him said they would’ve kept him overnight, (although there’s no one there at night) and there’s no way I could’ve let them do that. He’s just not used to being there and they gave him so much anesthesia he’s completely messed up. For a thin kitty, you’d think they would’ve dropped it a few notches, but like I said, he must’ve filleted a few of them. The doc didn’t speak to me at all, I’ve no idea where she was.
He’s ten years old. I think I waited to long to get him a dental. He shouldn’t have had to go through this at this age.
I can only hope he’s feeling better in the morning. I’m not going to sleep, there’s no room I can lock him in and everywhere is a counter he likes to jump up on. I’m going to be awake all night checking on him to be sure he doesn’t try it before he’s ready. And he still hasn’t eaten or drunk anything. I can’t get him to take water. He’s not a tinned food cat, he likes his crunchies, but I doubt he’ll be able to eat those for a few weeks.
My poor baby. I’ve apologised so many times. I feel terrible putting him through this.
I know the tooth had to have something done, but he looks so bad now. I just hope he comes out of it by morning.And to think I’m going to let these people grind my rabbits’ teeth next week after their big move? I’m a fraction away from cancelling that appointment and driving him all the way across town to a different vet that he’s only seen once, because she has the most unusual and fantastic surgery and she’s truly adept. But I fear my hub would probably put his foot down on that score.
Could I just ask for some vibes here for Griffy? He’s needing some pretty badly. Thanks guys.
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Been up all night. Feel sick to my stomach and queasy. Griff still hasn’t eaten or drunk anything. I syringed a few ml’s of water into his mouth this morning, but that just made him angry. He’s at least tracking me a bit with his eyes when I go by, but this is maddening. I so want to give someone a good reaming right now. >.< Trying to keep my mouth shut though.
I’ve read up on the tooth resorption. It’s a good thing to have treated, but I think, given that Griff doesn’t drink a lot of water, he’s just not got enough fluid in him to get the drugs out. I am terribly worried about his kidneys right now.
Oh wow, he just walked over to where I am at the computer from in front of the loo and laid back down. That’s huge considering how groggy he still is. But he’s still so out of it. NEVER seen him like this before.
I’m going to call the vet here in a few hours if he doesn’t perk up a little more. The 3rd eyelid is still protruding and he seems to still have dilated pupils, but they are even at least and our house is pretty dark, I just don’t want to flash a light in his eyes to see if they contract if he’s hurting.
Jerz, the clindamycin liquid has to be syringed in. 1 ml twice a day…again…urgh. (That was bad enough with Fiver and his metronidazole.) And he needs food on his stomach first. I am hoping it can wait till this evening. Going to have hubby get some baby food for him to try to give him some nourishment.
Yikes, and I thought it was bad when the buns went through this. At least with them you only have to fear the teeth during post op treatment…not razor sharp claws. And he looks so emaciated. If I were seeing him for the first time, I would’ve thought he’d been starved, beaten and left by the side of the road.
I’m just so angry and frustrated. And tired…really tired. I think Griff and I both look a bit alike this morning.
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For giving him his medication – When my cat was alive and we had to give her medications on the rare occasion, wrapping her in a towel helped somewhat. She still fought like mad, but wrapping her up helped contain her legs and those nice razor sharp claws.
Of course 2 people had to give medication. One to hold her and one to squirt it in. Hugs Mimz! I’m sorry he still hasn’t come out of it yet. Did they give him any pain medication as well? Sometimes that can make them groggy too. I’d be very upset with my vet too.
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Thanks Lin!
Thank you everyone for your kind vibes!
And yeah, we decided not to shave him. Good thing too, he would’ve been even more in shock. It was terrible bringing him home because he had so much spit just oozing from his mouth and he was so frantic and screaming himself hoarse. He’s not a good traveler unfortunately.
We have to go 30 miles each way to get there and then home, and to have them say, “Well we’d like to keep him a bit longer, but you’re here so…” Excuse me? Like I’m inconveniencing THEM when they told me to come get him?? Sheesh.
When he does feel better and has had some time to recover, I am going to have to bathe him. >.< He's such a mess. -
Believe it or not, the stress of the whole thing has me wide awake currently. When my daughter can take a shift I may crash for a bit.
Already tried getting syringes in. He is not interested and will whine, fight and run off. However he just scratched in the litter box about 30 minutes ago and I think he may have peed? Odd, because he had no water yesterday (that I know of unless he’s been drinking while I took cat naps) and wasn’t given IV fluids during the procedure (which I don’t get…Jenna had them). So I hope he’s not losing basic body water.
I’m looking to see if cats can have plain pedialyte, I have some here if necessary.
We’ll go in for sub-q’s tomorrow if he needs them. But he surprised the heck out of me with the litter box…plus he turned right around and jumped up into his favorite spot on the kitchen table. About gave me a heart attack! But he’s resting there now. He must be able to see better. And he’s had the worst vertigo I’ve ever seen in a cat so I was shocked he didn’t fall back to the floor in a heap.
I turned on the t.v. for him too. He likes to look at it while he’s lying there. Funny old guy.
Thanks again for vibes! -
(((((Griff)))))) It’s terrible how awful they can look after a procedure.
Don’t feel bad that you’ve never done dental work with him…10 really isn’t that old and most cats never get any dental work done so you’re a good cat Mommy! Hang in there!
Thought I’d send you a link: http://www.catchannel.com This is a great site (from the people who make CatIllustrated magazine). There is a forum that may be able to offer some help (lots of fun stuff there too, you can create profiles like Facebook for your kitties and earn points and get prizes). I love this site. Thought you might enjoy while your up all night anyways!
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Just a brief update tonight. I am seriously lacking sleep still and about to go out of my mind.
Thank you also for all the good vibes. Please keep them coming. Here’s why:
It’s been 5 days now since his surgery. He is still not eating or drinking as much as he should be (thank God he is eating at all), is unable to land jumps up on things and just goes straight up and down in the air (scary if there is a garbage can or something he can hurt himself on in the way) and is all confused/disoriented, has trouble keeping balance and even more disturbing is that his third eyelid on the right has not retracted. The whole eye looks awful and he obviously can’t see well enough to judge distance or depth. He sleeps under my bed most of the day (probably too scared if he can’t see right) and only comes out to his cuddly cup on the kitchen counter at night. He waffles back and forth between lucid and unfocused. It’s like I took a perfectly healthy (except for his teeth) cat into the vet Monday and brought back one that’s had a lobotomy.
The surgeon who did his dental saw him today and claims he has Horner’s Syndrome and that there is no cure, the eyelid will be that way permanently.
I’ve done my own research and I feel that if they had just given him antibiotics that clear up ear infection (his ear on the right is tender tonight and he’s sneezing every time he tries to eat) or even if they’d told me to give him benadryl during the first few days after his op to help with the nausea that we could’ve avoided having him go hungry so long and lose so much mass. He is currently skin and bones. Plus we might be now helping his eyelid by treating other underlying causes.
According to what I read, this condition is reversed in 6-8 weeks, but the eyelid is up so far that I’m afraid he’ll lose sight in that eye long before that. His overall vision is most definitely impaired regardless of what the vet told me. Her resignation in discussing his case makes me suspicious that she doesn’t want any treatment done, because then (I think) we might find he was hurt during his procedure. No xrays were offered, no mediications, no palliatives. The singular lack of cooperation, plus the literature she gave me being very vague on the subject, makes me uneasy.
He was supposed to have had a nerve block for pain, and then also a shot of metacam plus his anesthetics that day. Why so much pain killer for such a thin, small cat? (He weighed 9.8 lbs…I am certain he weighs less now.) Although the sympathetic nerves that are involved in the eyelid issue are not supposed to be in the area the block was administered in, we have some partial facial paralysis and definite lack of proper vision and vestibular disease going on here. What am I supposed to believe? To conclude? How would any of you see this?We’ve driven him the 60 mile round trip two days in a row for sub-q fluids. Tuesday a.m. he had tried to get into the bathroom sink to lap up some water, but still seemed too disoriented to have much success. I took this as a good sign though. He got lucky and a different doc was there on Tuesday and he was most sympathetic to Griff’s plight. He felt if he had fluids his overall condition would improve and the lid would go down. (the left actually raised for a bit that day, then receded) He put some ointment in Griff’s eyes. We got 200 ml of fluid in Griff and he had the camel hump…for a few hours. He sucked all that water in so fast it was gone by the time we got up from our naps that afternoon.
Still, not really eating or drinking. The drinking I didn’t worry about because he had the sub-q’s, but the eating was beginning to frighten me the more I read about hepatic lipidosis (not common but not unheard of in thin cats) so I force fed him some turkey baby food and milk (yes, I know they’re not supposed to have it) at 10 PM last night after offering a smorgasbord of other foods all day with no success. We got to the growling stage by the time I’d only gotten 1.5 ml in him, so I called it. I have had a very agitated cat on my hands the last few days, and didn’t want more stress for either of us, but sometimes mommy has to be mean to get things moving in the right direction again. I guess it helped-or the fluids did all the work by that point, because he went to his crunchies bowl at 2 AM today and nibbled a few! Thank God again!Still, we took him in for the extra fluids again today and received a little more metacam injection (a bunny sized dose) and the above diagnosis. I am distraught. He is not even half the cat I went in with Monday. All I wanted was to get his teeth cleaned. In the process, I can only surmise he was either left without oxygen, banged his head thrashing in fear, or the nerve block went in wrong…any of which will carry a malpractice charge. There are only so many things that directly cause Horner’s…and it’s too easy to just call it idiopathic.
There is one cosmetic approach, to use phenylephrine (?) to keep the lid down, but that would have to be every day. Would Griff put up with that? Especially while ill? Probably not. But unless it actually does resolve itself, it’s an option I may take.
He’s eaten a small bit of crunchies again today and 1/4 tsp of NutriCal plus some wheat grass. I am surprised he wants the dry food and not any of his canned stuff, it must hurt to chew it and he can’t pick it out of his bowl anymore, I have to put it flat on the counter for him. He’s used the box twice, both times just #1…I don’t know what to do if he doesn’t poop soon.
This is not my Griffy. This is a shadow of his former self. I am so angry.I did reschedule Mimzy with the doc there who’s seen him the most that I trust with him. But with all that’s happened to Griff in these last few days, I may not even keep that appointment. The condition Griff is in reminds me of Shadow’s in his last days. It doesn’t help that it will be a year this month. I really hate March.
Anyway…if you all could keep your vibes coming for him. I’ve been praying all week.
I may not be on much for awhile. Between Griff’s problems and my other daily work, plus we’ve been losing our phone service quite a bit lately, I can’t always get in here.
And right now, I need some sleep. Thanks again, everyone. Goodnight all. -
I’m just stopping by to say that MM emailed me about 8 PM last night to say that Griffy is doing MUCH BETTER.
He has been eating yucky tin cat food (despite what seem to be tastier options offered to him) and drinking enough, or at least responding to the injections of fluids enough, to be peeing several times and making some cat poos. He is out from under the bed and more alert, less groggy. His eyes are tearing, but the eyelid remains unmoved so far. His hearing is effected a little, but not deaf. So I have high hopes for a full recovery, or at least that he is moving from post-op awful to pain free, geriatric grumbly achy.
MM, however, is naturally exhausted and will take a bit of time off from the boards to get some rest. She has a good doc for herself, so she is not neglecting her own needs. She is weighing the several docs at the current vet practice that she likes alot against the possibility of the new vet practice, and will probably make decisions along the way depending on which pet and what their needs are.
If I know MM, she may respond to this thread again within a few hours (ah, the lure of the BB site) but thought I’d write this on her behalf in the hope that she and Griffy are napping together instead. -
Hey everybun! Just in for a quick update on Griff. I hadn’t wanted to post again till yesterday, not just because I’ve been crazy busy, but because we had an appointment with one of the vets I prefer at my office (quotes for the new place are rumored at 2 mill! it’s quite a setup!) and he did a brief test on Griffy’s eyelid that is still (after almost 2 weeks since surgery) unresponsive in any normal manner.
You’ll recall I said he had Horner’s which is a dysfunction of the sympathetic nerve pathways in the face and trunk. Damage can occur anywhere along the nerve and cause this ‘paralysis’ of the third eyelid and pupil in either animals or humans. In dogs and people, it’s caused by a virus. In cats they haven’t isolated the cause, so Griffy and I are helping chart some new territory for my vet.
He got some phenylephrine drops (and I mean a very few that he had to work hard to get here since only one pharmacy here will even order them) and put them in Griff’s eye yesterday. Then we held our breath. If the eyelid didn’t recede, he would have to be tested for either brain damage or a tumor or some other factor to cause the Horner’s.
I was despondent at first because the lid wouldn’t go down. He told me it would take seconds. Well, we held his eye shut again and for a little longer this time…then when he opened it…
It was down!
(setting off fireworks) And within a few more mintues you could see the pupil was normalizing. So it’s treatable! And possible that it will eventually, with therapy-by eyedrops-resolve itself! ^_^My vet is in contact with a specialist in this field and together they are sharing the research that he does on Griff, plus is getting help ordering the medicine that Griff will need for about a month or so until the nerve heals and picks the slack back up. But long story short, he’s going to be okay.
The vet kindly did not charge me for this wonderful visit although I know it had to have been at great cost to his own pocketbook to get those drops here. I would’ve paid any price to get my Griffy back whole again.
I still think this last two weeks has aged the both of us by about 5-10 years…but we’re on the other side now. He’s still got a touch of diarrhea (new foods to urge him to eat, so I have to give him Proviable), crusty ears (no infection though that the vet can tell) but I have stuff here to clean that which won’t affect his hearing and of course the drops wore off today so his eyelid is back up (drat, didn’t get a picture of him looking normal again) but we pick up a script on Monday, hopefully, if they’re able to ship it up here. His crown amputation is healing nicely and, wonder of wonders…he put on an ounce after looking like he lost 5 pounds!
So here is a small pic of Griff with his bum eye, and one I took of him the night before his dental.
It doesn’t show in the first pic very well, but he’s really still bedraggled and hasn’t gotten himself completely groomed yet, even today. The difference between the before and after is hard for me to describe, but he really came back a changed cat. Perhaps he had a near death experience that I’m not hearing about…I noticed yesterday that only some paperwork came in with the doctor…his chart was not in the room with us like it usually is…kinda makes me wonder. (and yes, I peeked…after all, I’m paying for this!) But the whole facility is revamped now…looks more like a real doc’s office (for people) instead of the makeshift (and in my opinon, cozier) double wide conversion style digs they were using before. They are less cramped now, but I did ask the attendant who seated us in our room how many times she’d gotten lost in the new building…she admitted more than once.
Needless to say, he looks a little worse for wear, but he’s coming back to me. And he is more cuddly than before and seeks me out more often, wanting comfort, which I am happy to oblige him with. I think any further surgeries are going to be done only under extreme need and with very careful treading on both my part and the vet’s.
Thanks again everyone for your kind thoughts, prayers and vibes for Griff’s recovery. (and mine too! lol) We’re getting somewhat back to normal, but things will still be haywire here due to other circumstances for about a month or so, and then you all will see me onilne more often….oh goody! lmao!!!
Take care everyone! See you soon!
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MM, that’s great.
The vet is using him for advancing his research, so being up front about that should result in a discount or freebie for you as a partner in the work that he needs. It isn’t often that an animal walks in with something that he would be able to research right then and there. I think it’s a great arrangement for you and an opportunity for him. Now let’s get those drops stocked up again.They do get more snuggly when they are older or unwell. It’s a comfort to them to be cared for by their mommies. So it often results in a closeness between you that hadn’t happened before. It was like that for me and Spockie. Sometimes I actually wonder if a surge of affection in Samantha means I should start noticing if there’s anything wrong with her health – it’s so unusual. Weird, huh?
Get some R&R with Griffy and the other “kids.” Looking forward to your more frequent appearances here.
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