Krusty has been barfing up a lot little pools of liquid for several nights in a row. At first they just looked like spit - so I assumed she had a hairball she was trying to get up. Then, on Thursday night, the liquid she coughed up looked reddish-brown, almost like blood. So I called the vet on Friday to try to get a Saturday appointment. They said they couldn't see her until Tuesday. I said okay, maybe she isn't puking up blood. Then Friday night she hacked up a big pool of stuff, this time more reddish than brown. I called the vet again first thing Saturday morning. They had a cancellation! Hooray. I took Krusty in. She wasn't acting like her usual self. Normally she's real curious and not concerned at all about ANYTHING. But on Saturday she was shaking and didn't even look around much.
The vet listened to Krusty's symptoms and said it could be a huge variety of things: Krusty swallowed something sharp that cut her insides, something in her lungs, something in her stomach, etc. An X-ray, a urinalysis, several blood tests, and $200 later, we had the cause: Krusty is getting an ulcer. She had a lot of gas in her intestines (which the vet kindly showed me on the X-ray) and the fluid she was coughing up was stomach acid. Yuck. And guess what else? Krusty is developing kidney stones! She's definitely got some calcium deposits in her kidneys.
What does all that mean? Well, we gave Krusty some Pepcid AC for her stomach and the vet gave her a shot of fluid for her slight dehydration. They inject the fluid under the skin which is then absorbed into the body throughout the day. It made her look like Quasimodo for the afternoon. Then most of it was gone except for a wad that slipped down to her elbow, so then she looked like Popeye for a while. As for the kidney stones, there's absolutely nothing we can do about it. The vet recommended a yearly urinalysis to keep track of them.
Poor Krusty.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment