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Lucy in Oahu
Jun. 5th, 2023 07:24 pmLUCY IN OAHU
THE FINICKINESS. After a week of eating well, on Sunday morning we decided not to tube food Lucy. Morning has always been her most finicky time, but she ate three quarters of her plate of food with just some urging, so we were quite satisfied.
A few hours later, after yardwork and our own lunch I then gave Lucy her steroid pill, which we'd been giving in her tube for the last few weeks. Plus her appetite stimulant in her ear. And we changed her dressing on her feeding tube.
Somehow, everything changed from there.
She slept most of the day. She didn't do any begging for food. When we offered her dry food, she didn't eat any. So we went to my dad and Mary's house and when Kimberly came home (while I went off to swimming), Lucy also had zero interest in wet food. By the time I got home, she ate part of a plate, and then ate part of a plate again near bed time. But each time, she was very slow again, and each time we tube-fed her the rest.
So Kimberly and I talked it over. We had hypotheses, like maybe it was because we'd taken her off the anti-nausea pill (but I counted up the half-lives and determined that she was at 1/16th of a pill left in her system when she ate _great_ on Saturday) or maybe it was because she was upset over the renewed pilling.
But ultimately, it revealed that the eating that we thought had stabilized after a solid week of eating well (minus her drugged-up state after her sutures were replaced Friday) was actually extremely fragile. Still.
THE PLAN. We started talking about whether it was time to take her in to the E/R, as we'd been advised to do by both our vet and the E/R if she took a downturn. Kimberly called the E/R to verify there would be an internist in today if we brought her in; they said yes and it sounded like we should bring her in. So we agreed and they put us "on their board for 11.45-noon".
THE RESERVATIONS. That time was based on us getting a 10.30 flight out of Lihue, which meant we should be at the airport by 9 and thus leave the house at 8.30. It was about as early as I was willing to go since I'd been sick to my stomach from stress Sunday evening, and I wanted to give my digestion some time to even out in the morning.
Getting the 10.30 flight was another challenge. First I couldn't get Hawaiian's online ordering to work (possibly because I was using Brave on my laptop, and so I ended up ordering them on my desktop). Second because I had to spend 15-20 minutes on the phone with a Hawaiian staffer to get Lucy OKed as in-cabin luggage.
But by 11.30 or so last night we had tickets. Just $44 each out to Oahu, though it looks like the return is going to be a lot more expensive.
THE NIGHT. Slept like crap last night. Couldn't get to sleep after all the excitement just before bedtime, and when I eventually did, I never had very restful slept. I woke at about 6am. My Fitbit lies that i got 5h16m of sleep and was *only* awake for 58m over the course of the night.
THE TRAVEL. We headed out to the airport at 8.30 and got there just in advance of 9. The airport parking lot was already pretty jammed. It's just not big enough any more, so I hope Kauai managed to block the four new gates that the Feds were trying to require to get certain funds a year or two ago, totally irrelevent to the overtourism of our island and the various infrastructural insufficiencies.
We had to go to physical check-in and spend another 10 or 15 minutes dealing with cat paperwork.
The administrator actually kneeled down to make sure that Lucy could stand up in her cat carrier (which she can, she's a small cat). If they'd done that when we flew out here three and a half years ago we would not have been able to get Callisto onto the island, and boy would that have been a pretty mess at 7am on January 1 with our hard cat carriers already on a boat.
TSA was pretty mellow. I just pulled Lucy out her carrier and carried her through TSA (making me the carrier, I suppose). The only problem being that they questioned her feeding tube and collar to protect that tube. But when I explained, they nodded and didn't make me disassemble it or anything.
The plane flight stressed me out, just because I was worried about Lucy.
Then the Lyft ride stressed me out because I was increasingly concerned if Lucy would need to use the bathroom, and we were in someone else's car.
And we finally arrived at the vet which turns out to be in a pretty bad part of Honolulu (but i5 seems a pretty nice facility).
THE VET. Because we were "on the board" at the ER vet, we had hopes that we might get Lucy in (and out) pretty quickly. Not so.
They're apparently short-staffed, as everyone continues to be, and had a lot of emergencies, most of them seeming to be dogs having troubles walking.
We sat around for about three and a half hours, with one apology and explanation, and then finally got to see the vet.
The vet says the most likely problems are a continued inflammation of the colon (which we'd control with prednisone and diet, except we're already giving her prednisone and diet and it's not controlling it) or else a small-cell cancer (which would be slow-moving and we'd control for a a while with chemotherapy pills). I'm not convinced that it's either of those, especially with her weird agitation when she eats, but the vet's the boss.
It had also gotten so late that they wanted us to leave her for the night, which we did, paying a large estimated bill to dos o (much of it for "nurse care", which she really doesn't need, but was what was needed to leave her there so that they could keep testing and such, and our cat insurance should cover half of it or so).
We're hoping to know more tomorrow. I mean, we're hoping to get an answer. I'm not sure I have faith that doing much more than our Kauai vet did, but maybe they'll be able to interpret the results better, particularly the ultrasound.
THE STAY. So, we're staying overnight. We got a room at a hotel on the corner of Waikiki where it turns out that I've stayed before (though that was ironically in a suite without Kimberly, and this is in a single room with her, but that's the difference between renting a private room through Air B&B and renting a hotel room from their web site).
We walked out to Ala Moana to get dinner at a dim sum restaurant, because we might as well make lemonade if we're stuck here with the lemons for the night.
And we're hoping that tomorrow we get answers, get Lucy, and get home.
My dad is going to go check in on the orangies in the morning. We hope no one has knocked out any screens (we closed them up as best as is currently possible before we left) and the house is still standing.
THE FINICKINESS. After a week of eating well, on Sunday morning we decided not to tube food Lucy. Morning has always been her most finicky time, but she ate three quarters of her plate of food with just some urging, so we were quite satisfied.
A few hours later, after yardwork and our own lunch I then gave Lucy her steroid pill, which we'd been giving in her tube for the last few weeks. Plus her appetite stimulant in her ear. And we changed her dressing on her feeding tube.
Somehow, everything changed from there.
She slept most of the day. She didn't do any begging for food. When we offered her dry food, she didn't eat any. So we went to my dad and Mary's house and when Kimberly came home (while I went off to swimming), Lucy also had zero interest in wet food. By the time I got home, she ate part of a plate, and then ate part of a plate again near bed time. But each time, she was very slow again, and each time we tube-fed her the rest.
So Kimberly and I talked it over. We had hypotheses, like maybe it was because we'd taken her off the anti-nausea pill (but I counted up the half-lives and determined that she was at 1/16th of a pill left in her system when she ate _great_ on Saturday) or maybe it was because she was upset over the renewed pilling.
But ultimately, it revealed that the eating that we thought had stabilized after a solid week of eating well (minus her drugged-up state after her sutures were replaced Friday) was actually extremely fragile. Still.
THE PLAN. We started talking about whether it was time to take her in to the E/R, as we'd been advised to do by both our vet and the E/R if she took a downturn. Kimberly called the E/R to verify there would be an internist in today if we brought her in; they said yes and it sounded like we should bring her in. So we agreed and they put us "on their board for 11.45-noon".
THE RESERVATIONS. That time was based on us getting a 10.30 flight out of Lihue, which meant we should be at the airport by 9 and thus leave the house at 8.30. It was about as early as I was willing to go since I'd been sick to my stomach from stress Sunday evening, and I wanted to give my digestion some time to even out in the morning.
Getting the 10.30 flight was another challenge. First I couldn't get Hawaiian's online ordering to work (possibly because I was using Brave on my laptop, and so I ended up ordering them on my desktop). Second because I had to spend 15-20 minutes on the phone with a Hawaiian staffer to get Lucy OKed as in-cabin luggage.
But by 11.30 or so last night we had tickets. Just $44 each out to Oahu, though it looks like the return is going to be a lot more expensive.
THE NIGHT. Slept like crap last night. Couldn't get to sleep after all the excitement just before bedtime, and when I eventually did, I never had very restful slept. I woke at about 6am. My Fitbit lies that i got 5h16m of sleep and was *only* awake for 58m over the course of the night.
THE TRAVEL. We headed out to the airport at 8.30 and got there just in advance of 9. The airport parking lot was already pretty jammed. It's just not big enough any more, so I hope Kauai managed to block the four new gates that the Feds were trying to require to get certain funds a year or two ago, totally irrelevent to the overtourism of our island and the various infrastructural insufficiencies.
We had to go to physical check-in and spend another 10 or 15 minutes dealing with cat paperwork.
The administrator actually kneeled down to make sure that Lucy could stand up in her cat carrier (which she can, she's a small cat). If they'd done that when we flew out here three and a half years ago we would not have been able to get Callisto onto the island, and boy would that have been a pretty mess at 7am on January 1 with our hard cat carriers already on a boat.
TSA was pretty mellow. I just pulled Lucy out her carrier and carried her through TSA (making me the carrier, I suppose). The only problem being that they questioned her feeding tube and collar to protect that tube. But when I explained, they nodded and didn't make me disassemble it or anything.
The plane flight stressed me out, just because I was worried about Lucy.
Then the Lyft ride stressed me out because I was increasingly concerned if Lucy would need to use the bathroom, and we were in someone else's car.
And we finally arrived at the vet which turns out to be in a pretty bad part of Honolulu (but i5 seems a pretty nice facility).
THE VET. Because we were "on the board" at the ER vet, we had hopes that we might get Lucy in (and out) pretty quickly. Not so.
They're apparently short-staffed, as everyone continues to be, and had a lot of emergencies, most of them seeming to be dogs having troubles walking.
We sat around for about three and a half hours, with one apology and explanation, and then finally got to see the vet.
The vet says the most likely problems are a continued inflammation of the colon (which we'd control with prednisone and diet, except we're already giving her prednisone and diet and it's not controlling it) or else a small-cell cancer (which would be slow-moving and we'd control for a a while with chemotherapy pills). I'm not convinced that it's either of those, especially with her weird agitation when she eats, but the vet's the boss.
It had also gotten so late that they wanted us to leave her for the night, which we did, paying a large estimated bill to dos o (much of it for "nurse care", which she really doesn't need, but was what was needed to leave her there so that they could keep testing and such, and our cat insurance should cover half of it or so).
We're hoping to know more tomorrow. I mean, we're hoping to get an answer. I'm not sure I have faith that doing much more than our Kauai vet did, but maybe they'll be able to interpret the results better, particularly the ultrasound.
THE STAY. So, we're staying overnight. We got a room at a hotel on the corner of Waikiki where it turns out that I've stayed before (though that was ironically in a suite without Kimberly, and this is in a single room with her, but that's the difference between renting a private room through Air B&B and renting a hotel room from their web site).
We walked out to Ala Moana to get dinner at a dim sum restaurant, because we might as well make lemonade if we're stuck here with the lemons for the night.
And we're hoping that tomorrow we get answers, get Lucy, and get home.
My dad is going to go check in on the orangies in the morning. We hope no one has knocked out any screens (we closed them up as best as is currently possible before we left) and the house is still standing.