^ nice close up!
I guess I never did mention what Oliver Bacon's deal is/was/will be/. Sorry. So here's the story. Or a lesson in why you should get pet insurance (which I do not have of course).
Thursday evening after coming home from a routine hike around a lake in the woods, he finished his dry kibble dinner. Not long after, he up-chucked it (and his breakfast). Proceeded to barf (the bad foamy bile) throughout the night and Friday morning.
Regular vet clinic overbooked. Called another vet who makes house calls (he didn't get my message for 2 hours. Talked a bit, decided he needed to be seen elsewhere (he's not equipped for big jobs). By the time I got him in to the mac daddy of clinics it was Friday afternoon.
Out of a stomach x-ray and stool sample, they only detected a common parasite giardia (comes primarily from goose poop). Stomach totally free of anything - no blockage. Giardia diagnosis was curious to me since Brian has had it several times and just gets diarrhea (put on whatever meds and he's fine - no worse for wear). Oliver's first reaction to giardia seemed SO severe to me.
That clinic (AE) gave him anti-nausea injection (+ antibiotics). He threw up a few more times Friday night/early Sat. I called regular clinic (TT) who we really like and miracle: they had an opening Sat. afternoon.
Learning his stomach was clear from previous clinic, they decided bloodwork and x-rays of intestines was in order (suspecting s'thing in those). Bloodwork showed white blood cell count 2x higher than normal. Intestines appearing clean. (WTF?!?!?!?!)
This clinic hires someone who comes 1x/week w/an ultrasound machine so they could not do that to double check the innards. Option was to wait until Monday for that person or go to AE or other big clinic that has a machine and tech onsite. Third option: open him up now. Rather than drive around town wasting potentially more critical time, I asked for gut feel of s'thing in the intestines that they couldn't see on x-ray. "80%". Ok, can you stay and open him up (they were closing soon). The two docs who were very worried about him, opened him up w/in minutes ("we've never made an estimate so fast in our history"). uh.
After surgery, Dr. comes out: clean intestines and stomach (another WTF). What they
did find is that what little fat he has around his organs (primarily around the stomach and pancreas – pancreas being the primary suspected demon) was very hard. They also said the intestines were disconcertingly dark in color. They palpated stomach and intestines and flushed them out (still found nothing).
Cultures and pathology tests due this week.
Post surgery, we did have to take him to a 24 hour care clinic. I knew he would not do well there – being so scared and shy and timid to begin with. Got approval to take him home 36 hours after being admitted there since he indeed was not doing well.
Even having been given anti-nausea at 24 hour place, he still threw up one time. Some small burps when I got him home but not bile foam.
Feeding him whatever bland we can get in him in the hopes he keeps it down (mission critical) and recovers. If he can't keep it down, he goes on a feeding tube (only if we don't yet have test results back to make more informed decisions).
While he only had a few urps yesterday, I was really really really worried he wasn't going to make it through the day. But he has. Still really critical at this point.
Waiting, as we know, sucks.
