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A Nightmarish Week
Nov. 5th, 2021 07:44 pmI had such a good day last Sunday, having a great lunch at Tip Top, swimming at the Y with Kimberly, and starting to put our toes back in the water (as it were) for getting involved in the Kauai community, something put off for nearly two years by the pandemic.
But the week since has felt like a nightmare. Literally, in the sense that the days blur together, I'm losing sense of time, and it feels like we're doing the same actions again and again.
Callisto, it's mainly been about Callisto. Poor Callisto. For a few weeks now, maybe close to a month, she's been picky with her food. Eating maybe half of her dinner most nights and often getting distracted, staring off into the distance and then wandering away. I'd actually wanted to call the vet two Saturdays ago, to get an appointment scheduled, but then that didn't happen, and she ate her whole meal that night, and then the next five nights or so. But this Monday we'd had two more days of her not eating well, so I called the vet. I just figured maybe she needed another anti-nausea shot to shake off her lizard-eating (or whatever) from her last visit. I hadn't realized it'd actually been two months(!) since that.
So I took her in on Monday, especially after she started hiding from me during the day(!), and she saw Dr. I., her regular vet, and Dr. I. came back to tell me Callisto was running a fever(!) of 103.5. They shot her up with some antibiotics and anti-nausea med and scheduled her for a follow-up on Wednesday. Wednesday, the fever was still there, now 103.7, so they did a blood work-up, and said she had high white-blood cell count (like two months ago), low red-blood cell count, and pancreatitis (though the doctor was iffy on that, because she and a tech interpreted the result differently). They gave her some anti-nausea meds again, and I came home with steroids and antibiotics.
And it's just gotten worse since then. She's stopped eating entirely at times, she's been increasingly lethargic, she's been hiding much of the time.
After not eating at all Wednesday night, she was back to the vet on Thursday, because her fast breathing was deemed to likely be reaction to pain, so we got her some pain meds, and some fluids. They'd given her that on some of her other visits too, because we've been fighting her not getting much food or water all week. She seemed great Thursday night, begging for food and eating, then doing the same this morning. (I kept having to edit the days I was typing into this, because like I said, it all blurs together.)
And then Callisto laid around seeming miserable all day today. And now she's perky again this evening, and begging for food ... but not eating.
So I'm guessing tomorrow it's back to the vet for more anti-nausea (since I'm guessing that's maybe the problem, since her shot from Wednesday is now worn off, or at least I'm hoping, because what else is there to do??), and I bet more fluids. We should also ask if we can get fluids for home, because we've given it to cats before.
It so frustrating because she's perky and then she's miserable; she's eating and then she's begging for food but walking away. And giving her a continual sequence of opiates and bringing her in for constant fluids feels like we're just barely keeping her struggling on from day to day. Obviously, the hope is that the steroids and antibiotics will get the pancreatitis under control, and we just need to wait until that's the case, and that's cool, I can do that, but I've also read about pancreatitis needing in-house care, and so if it's a serious case, she's not getting that.
Poor baby, I want her to be feeling well and back to her life. She's such a happy and enthusiastic cat usually, and in particular she loves her food. So it's just killing me seeing her like this, let alone the exhaustion from constantly monitoring her, constantly figuring out when vet intervention is needed, and constantly going over there and sitting outside because we can't go into the vet office.
PS: Although not nearly the same magnitude as having a very sick cat, I've also been out of sorts this week because I destroyed my electronic tablet last week. I threw it in the laundry basket to take it downstairs with me, and then rather than taking it out to put it on the charger (as intended), I tossed it in the washer. Yep, that didn't end well, and yes, there was a lesson learned about carrying things downstairs.
Fortunately, I wasn't that broken up because it was an Amazon Fire, and I'd already decided it was pretty crap. The browser regularly locked up for long minutes before crashing. I couldn't put most apps on without sideloading them. The screen was a bit smaller than I liked (10"). A few months ago it stopped charging reliably because it complained about moisture in the charger. (There wasn't any.) And the official cover I got from Amazon, which I thought would be higher quality than the third-parties was crap too: it was all fraying and it stank from the humidity. So fortunately I'd just gotten some payments from freelance work, and I got myself a new tablet.
Well, I should say ordered myself a new tablet, because it's not here yet. And I've felt really out-of-wack not having my handy internet and comic-book access on hand in the morning when I wake up and at night when I lay about in the living room. And given that the new tablet was last seen in San Francisco, I don't think I'm going to have the new one tomorrow as scheduled. And I already know my new cover didn't show up today as scheduled, and in fact the second Amazon put it in the mail the arrival date jumped 10 days(!). (I was pissed; if they'd told me the much longer arrival date I wouldn't have ordered it, since there were many other options.)
I mean this doesn't stress me out like the very sick cat, I don't feel like I'm constantly called upon to make life-or-death decisions. But it's adding to my disorientation.
But the week since has felt like a nightmare. Literally, in the sense that the days blur together, I'm losing sense of time, and it feels like we're doing the same actions again and again.
Callisto, it's mainly been about Callisto. Poor Callisto. For a few weeks now, maybe close to a month, she's been picky with her food. Eating maybe half of her dinner most nights and often getting distracted, staring off into the distance and then wandering away. I'd actually wanted to call the vet two Saturdays ago, to get an appointment scheduled, but then that didn't happen, and she ate her whole meal that night, and then the next five nights or so. But this Monday we'd had two more days of her not eating well, so I called the vet. I just figured maybe she needed another anti-nausea shot to shake off her lizard-eating (or whatever) from her last visit. I hadn't realized it'd actually been two months(!) since that.
So I took her in on Monday, especially after she started hiding from me during the day(!), and she saw Dr. I., her regular vet, and Dr. I. came back to tell me Callisto was running a fever(!) of 103.5. They shot her up with some antibiotics and anti-nausea med and scheduled her for a follow-up on Wednesday. Wednesday, the fever was still there, now 103.7, so they did a blood work-up, and said she had high white-blood cell count (like two months ago), low red-blood cell count, and pancreatitis (though the doctor was iffy on that, because she and a tech interpreted the result differently). They gave her some anti-nausea meds again, and I came home with steroids and antibiotics.
And it's just gotten worse since then. She's stopped eating entirely at times, she's been increasingly lethargic, she's been hiding much of the time.
After not eating at all Wednesday night, she was back to the vet on Thursday, because her fast breathing was deemed to likely be reaction to pain, so we got her some pain meds, and some fluids. They'd given her that on some of her other visits too, because we've been fighting her not getting much food or water all week. She seemed great Thursday night, begging for food and eating, then doing the same this morning. (I kept having to edit the days I was typing into this, because like I said, it all blurs together.)
And then Callisto laid around seeming miserable all day today. And now she's perky again this evening, and begging for food ... but not eating.
So I'm guessing tomorrow it's back to the vet for more anti-nausea (since I'm guessing that's maybe the problem, since her shot from Wednesday is now worn off, or at least I'm hoping, because what else is there to do??), and I bet more fluids. We should also ask if we can get fluids for home, because we've given it to cats before.
It so frustrating because she's perky and then she's miserable; she's eating and then she's begging for food but walking away. And giving her a continual sequence of opiates and bringing her in for constant fluids feels like we're just barely keeping her struggling on from day to day. Obviously, the hope is that the steroids and antibiotics will get the pancreatitis under control, and we just need to wait until that's the case, and that's cool, I can do that, but I've also read about pancreatitis needing in-house care, and so if it's a serious case, she's not getting that.
Poor baby, I want her to be feeling well and back to her life. She's such a happy and enthusiastic cat usually, and in particular she loves her food. So it's just killing me seeing her like this, let alone the exhaustion from constantly monitoring her, constantly figuring out when vet intervention is needed, and constantly going over there and sitting outside because we can't go into the vet office.
PS: Although not nearly the same magnitude as having a very sick cat, I've also been out of sorts this week because I destroyed my electronic tablet last week. I threw it in the laundry basket to take it downstairs with me, and then rather than taking it out to put it on the charger (as intended), I tossed it in the washer. Yep, that didn't end well, and yes, there was a lesson learned about carrying things downstairs.
Fortunately, I wasn't that broken up because it was an Amazon Fire, and I'd already decided it was pretty crap. The browser regularly locked up for long minutes before crashing. I couldn't put most apps on without sideloading them. The screen was a bit smaller than I liked (10"). A few months ago it stopped charging reliably because it complained about moisture in the charger. (There wasn't any.) And the official cover I got from Amazon, which I thought would be higher quality than the third-parties was crap too: it was all fraying and it stank from the humidity. So fortunately I'd just gotten some payments from freelance work, and I got myself a new tablet.
Well, I should say ordered myself a new tablet, because it's not here yet. And I've felt really out-of-wack not having my handy internet and comic-book access on hand in the morning when I wake up and at night when I lay about in the living room. And given that the new tablet was last seen in San Francisco, I don't think I'm going to have the new one tomorrow as scheduled. And I already know my new cover didn't show up today as scheduled, and in fact the second Amazon put it in the mail the arrival date jumped 10 days(!). (I was pissed; if they'd told me the much longer arrival date I wouldn't have ordered it, since there were many other options.)
I mean this doesn't stress me out like the very sick cat, I don't feel like I'm constantly called upon to make life-or-death decisions. But it's adding to my disorientation.