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Lucy Status: One Week Later
ONE WEEK LATER
So Lucy got a feeding tube put in last Friday, and we've now tube fed her for a week.
Our general pattern has been: feed her around 9am with a fresh can of food; feed her around 3pm with food that we have to carefully heat up and carefully mix with crushed up pills (anti-nausea + steroids); and feed her again around 9pm with food that's again carefully heated, but finishes out the can. It takes about an hour total, though I think we're getting faster. (We also have been having to constantly rearrange that schedule for my client work days and for Kimberly's various PT work & doctor appointments.)
We started out trying to feed her in the bottom half of a cat carrier, since we'd successfully given her fluids in that way. But after a few days she started getting agitated and even hiding when she saw us setting up.
That felt pretty suck, so the next day I tried something new. I bundled her up in her favorite cat blanket at as a "cat burrito", and she *loved* that. Just purred and often would keep sitting there after the feeding. So that's been the mechanism since.
Over time she's gradually started to eat bits of the A-D food we're tube feeding her before and after her feeding. We also took her into the vet yesterday for her weekly follow-up and got some new "Senior" dry food, and she eats that if I present it to her. In fact, her energy and eating have been quite good yesterday and today. I think we skipping the morning tube feeding each time because I felt like she'd eaten enough each time. So, I have my fingers crossed. There were definitely other individual days when she was doing better, and then she crashed again, so I'm not trying too much to feel like she's on the mend. But I'm hopeful.
STREEEESSSSS
If that somewhat clinical description doesn't make it obvious, this is SUPER STRESSFUL. Lucy does better for a day, and we're feeling good, and then she's doing worse, and we're feeling awful. And meanwhile we're having to constantly make time in our day for that hour of feeding, spread across the day.
Oh, and there are crises. Like last night we changed the padding over Lucy's tube-wound but it had got all gunky and stuck to her and the wound and the sutures. Kimberly and I worked at it a while, and eventually gave up, and I at least went to bed slightly freaked out. This morning we called the vet first thing and were able to take her in before their normal appointments, and using tweezers and a razor, a vet tech was able to get things cleaned up and tell us it all still looked good. But STREEEESSSS.
I was really happy to get to play a game I'd been excited about with my friends online yesterday (Ark Nova). I mean, it took us almost four hours for a first time play with over an hour of teach, so it mucked up my and Kimberly's schedule even worse, putting dinner and the late feeding quite late. But the three or so hours of play were fun and enjoyable, so that was a good change of pace.
A TRIP TO OAHU
So the next step in Lucy's care would be a trip out to see an internist in Oahu. We were actually offered this option for Callisto too, but it never felt as real, and Dr. I. didn't feel like there was much there could do. So it just felt like we'd be torturing a cat with a horrifying plane trip when she was already very sick and terrified of everything. But Lucy's situation is very different with her being mostly good other than fatigue and not eating. So we told Dr. C. at our vet we were willing to give it a shot when we saw her yesterday.
Dr. C. at our vet set everything up for us*, and then a staff member at the vet hospital called us and set up an appointment. It's four weeks hence, but the staff member also said we could call ahead and bring Lucy into their 24x7 emergency room if she declines again. We also have lists of pet-friendly hotels near the vet, and we still have plane-sized carriers from when we brought Callisto and Lucy out here.
So, that's the plan for the moment: see if Lucy continues to do better; if not bring her out to the Vet ER** on Oahu; and if so probably still bring her out to the Vet in four weeks, as she's definitely had some ongoing problems and we don't want to be right back here in two months.
* Life on island annoyingly means that sometimes you need to go to another island to get stuff done. But it also means that administrators do everything they can to make that off-island trip easy to manage.
** Just knowing a Vet ER that we could take a cat to in a dire emergency, if we felt they could manage a plane trip, is a huge relief even irrespective of this, as the lack of real Vet ER on the island has been a huge concern for us.
THE ORANGIES
I should note that our beloved orangies had their second vet visit on Thursday as well. We actually jammed the whole family into one teeny vet office! It was just their check-up and indoor cat vaccines. They're fine, but a little overweight.
The orangies eat more than they should, pretty typical for indoor cats, but not a major problem we've had with our other kitties. If Lucy weren't around, I probably wouldn't free-range feed them at this point. So they better appreciate their old auntie. (They do; obsessively so.)
So Lucy got a feeding tube put in last Friday, and we've now tube fed her for a week.
Our general pattern has been: feed her around 9am with a fresh can of food; feed her around 3pm with food that we have to carefully heat up and carefully mix with crushed up pills (anti-nausea + steroids); and feed her again around 9pm with food that's again carefully heated, but finishes out the can. It takes about an hour total, though I think we're getting faster. (We also have been having to constantly rearrange that schedule for my client work days and for Kimberly's various PT work & doctor appointments.)
We started out trying to feed her in the bottom half of a cat carrier, since we'd successfully given her fluids in that way. But after a few days she started getting agitated and even hiding when she saw us setting up.
That felt pretty suck, so the next day I tried something new. I bundled her up in her favorite cat blanket at as a "cat burrito", and she *loved* that. Just purred and often would keep sitting there after the feeding. So that's been the mechanism since.
Over time she's gradually started to eat bits of the A-D food we're tube feeding her before and after her feeding. We also took her into the vet yesterday for her weekly follow-up and got some new "Senior" dry food, and she eats that if I present it to her. In fact, her energy and eating have been quite good yesterday and today. I think we skipping the morning tube feeding each time because I felt like she'd eaten enough each time. So, I have my fingers crossed. There were definitely other individual days when she was doing better, and then she crashed again, so I'm not trying too much to feel like she's on the mend. But I'm hopeful.
STREEEESSSSS
If that somewhat clinical description doesn't make it obvious, this is SUPER STRESSFUL. Lucy does better for a day, and we're feeling good, and then she's doing worse, and we're feeling awful. And meanwhile we're having to constantly make time in our day for that hour of feeding, spread across the day.
Oh, and there are crises. Like last night we changed the padding over Lucy's tube-wound but it had got all gunky and stuck to her and the wound and the sutures. Kimberly and I worked at it a while, and eventually gave up, and I at least went to bed slightly freaked out. This morning we called the vet first thing and were able to take her in before their normal appointments, and using tweezers and a razor, a vet tech was able to get things cleaned up and tell us it all still looked good. But STREEEESSSS.
I was really happy to get to play a game I'd been excited about with my friends online yesterday (Ark Nova). I mean, it took us almost four hours for a first time play with over an hour of teach, so it mucked up my and Kimberly's schedule even worse, putting dinner and the late feeding quite late. But the three or so hours of play were fun and enjoyable, so that was a good change of pace.
A TRIP TO OAHU
So the next step in Lucy's care would be a trip out to see an internist in Oahu. We were actually offered this option for Callisto too, but it never felt as real, and Dr. I. didn't feel like there was much there could do. So it just felt like we'd be torturing a cat with a horrifying plane trip when she was already very sick and terrified of everything. But Lucy's situation is very different with her being mostly good other than fatigue and not eating. So we told Dr. C. at our vet we were willing to give it a shot when we saw her yesterday.
Dr. C. at our vet set everything up for us*, and then a staff member at the vet hospital called us and set up an appointment. It's four weeks hence, but the staff member also said we could call ahead and bring Lucy into their 24x7 emergency room if she declines again. We also have lists of pet-friendly hotels near the vet, and we still have plane-sized carriers from when we brought Callisto and Lucy out here.
So, that's the plan for the moment: see if Lucy continues to do better; if not bring her out to the Vet ER** on Oahu; and if so probably still bring her out to the Vet in four weeks, as she's definitely had some ongoing problems and we don't want to be right back here in two months.
* Life on island annoyingly means that sometimes you need to go to another island to get stuff done. But it also means that administrators do everything they can to make that off-island trip easy to manage.
** Just knowing a Vet ER that we could take a cat to in a dire emergency, if we felt they could manage a plane trip, is a huge relief even irrespective of this, as the lack of real Vet ER on the island has been a huge concern for us.
THE ORANGIES
I should note that our beloved orangies had their second vet visit on Thursday as well. We actually jammed the whole family into one teeny vet office! It was just their check-up and indoor cat vaccines. They're fine, but a little overweight.
The orangies eat more than they should, pretty typical for indoor cats, but not a major problem we've had with our other kitties. If Lucy weren't around, I probably wouldn't free-range feed them at this point. So they better appreciate their old auntie. (They do; obsessively so.)