Here We Go Again

Sweetwater Rv Resort – Zephyrhills, Florida

We were very hesitant on making camping reservations in Vero Beach, due to our record of having to cancel every reservation we have made.

Well….it looks like we were right to be concerned.  We may have to cancel them too!

On Wednesday we took our kitty Socks back to the veterinarian.  She is 19 years old, has thyroid problems and her kidneys had been failing.  We’ve had her on fluids (daily for several days) and now weekly.  The kidneys have improved but we needed to see how the thyroid was doing.  We haven’t been able to get that under control with her meds. 

I had also been watching Squeaky and I wasn’t sure she was feeling right.  She was lethargic and just not quite acting like herself.  However, with cats, they frequently change modes, so I wasn’t really sure.

We found Blake Veterinary Hospital in Dade City, Florida and we really like them. They were caring, and priced fairly reasonably.  They have a very good “library” on their website, with lots of good information.  It might be a good site to bookmark if you have pets. 

I decided to bring Squeaky with us when we took Socks.  Squeaky is 12 years old and I felt some blood work would be in order.

I was shocked when the vet looked at her and immediately said she was jaundiced.  I just hadn’t noticed.  He did an ultrasound to look at her liver and then ran some blood work.  She had lost some weight in the past year or so but it had been very gradual so I didn’t really worry.  She hasn’t seemed as peppy as she used to be, but we attributed that to her age.

It turned out that she has Cholangiohepatitis, which is basically inflammation of the liver and bile ducts.   Bacteria which live in the intestine somehow get up into the bile ducts and invade the liver.  It’s fairly common in cats as it turns out.  The doc said her condition was “grave.”  Let the tears begin!  He wanted to keep her there for 3-5 days on iv’s.  She would be getting 3 different types of antibiotics,  and steroids.  I really hate to leave my kitties at the vet because I know no one will give her the care I would.  However, this time it had to be done.  I couldn’t give her what she needed this time.

We left her there Wednesday.  On Thursday we went to visit her.  I knew she would be scared and would feel better if she saw us.  The doctor said he was “optimistic.”   I don’t know what changed his mind as he hadn’t run anymore blood work at that time.   She had on what they sometimes call an “Elizabethan Collar” because she had chewed her iv line.  She looked pretty pathetic.

They closed the clinic at noon Thursday and

someone would only come back to check on her and hand feed her.  I really don’t like her being there alone, but didn’t have any choice. 

This morning I called at 8am to check on her and was scared about what I might hear.  Thankfully he said her bilirubin levels were down by 50% and that was very good news.  He was hoping to release her tomorrow.  I’m going to go see her again (yeah, I know), but she’s our baby and we love her a lot.  I found her when she was just weeks old.  She was on the side of the road with her head stuck in a plastic bag.  She was shaking to get it off her head but her little tiny kitten shake was so slight that she would never have gotten it off.  It was so cute how she was shaking.  I grabbed her, put her in the seat beside me, went home and told Al, “look what I found”.  He was used to me bringing critters home so he wasn’t at all surprised.  It was love at first site between Squeaky and me.  She is a sweet and very loving kitty.

So, hopefully she can recover completely from this and live out a long life.  I understand there will be possible issues in the future and we’ll have to keep a close watch on her.

We’re going to wait and see what the vet says tomorrow and then make a decision on whether or not we can go on to Vero Beach.  Squeaky’s health will come first.

On another subject….

When we first got here and tried to put out our awning, we found it didn’t have tension on one side.  We thought a tension spring may have broken.  We hadn’t needed the awning until recently.  Al located some springs that he was assured were the correct ones.  We bought two (one for the left and one for the right) since we didn’t really know what we would need.  We didn’t want to take the awning apart until we had the springs as back up. 

Al and our friend Dean started working on it about 4:30 yesterday.  We had meager instructions and neither really knew what to expect.  We found our problem was not the spring, but a bolt that had broken off.  They decided to just go ahead and replace the spring anyway since we already had one.  Long story short, the piece we bought was not the right one.  It was very, very close, and they didn’t know it was the wrong one until they had worked for a few hours on it!  The then decided to just go ahead and fix the old one with a new bolt. 

Al has tons of nuts and bolts at home in Georgia, but unfortunately not the right ones here with us.  By this time it was quite dark, so they decided to make a trip to Home Depot this morning and give it up for the night.

They are working on it now.  Wish us luck!