a little back story. in february we noticed that pawpi's face wasn't looking quite right. she's a puffy cat, so for her face to look unusually puffy was pretty extreme. having the extra puff on one side helped to distinguish that something was wrong.
we gave it a day then called the vets that first week in february. they said it looked like one of the other cats must have scratched her and it was infected. they shaved her cheek a little, lanced it, pushed the goop out and then gave her some antibiotics.
it seemed like it was getting better then it got worse. she went back to the vets, more lancing and goop and antibiotics. then she got the cone which she seemed to have a love/hate relationship with. she loved to lick the plastic. lick lick lick, all day long. who needs the plastic bags and paper towels to lick when there was plastic right infront of her face. the other cats however did not like the cone and wouldn't get near her. she had to re-learn how to go up and down the stairs and would bump into everything. she went to the vets a few more times, about once a week and they would give more antibiotics but she was dripping juices ALL OVER THE HOUSE. it was terrible. she looked horrible and it was aweful.
a few days before we went to las vegas, she had surgery to insert a drainage tube. this was an option from the beginning, but since she is an older cat they wanted to avoid putting her under if they could. they did some biopsies at the same time and checked out her teeth which apparently were in good shape. when she came home she had no whiskers on that side of her face, a giant clear plastic tube sticking out the top and bottom of her face and a bunch of stitches. it looked super scary, but she seemed ok with it. she just did her own thing.
we decided to board her at the vets while we were gone, which was a good idea because after writing a note to the cat sitter that said "pawpi looks terrible, but if she starts to look more terrible, please take her to the vet" we decided that it would be a good idea to not worry the cat sitter like that. she stayed there 5 nights i think and they took good care of her. meanwhile they took out the tube and then later the stiches.
she stayed on the antibiotics and she seemed like she was getting better. her whiskers started to grow back and the cone even came off! she was still going to the vets pretty much every week, and they stopped charging us each time, thank goodness, but we did have to pay for the antibiotics each time.
after a few more weeks the vets said she wasn't healing. it looked better but the hole wasn't closing. there was somethign going on inside that was causing the hole not to heal. the antibiotics were helping with the secondary staph infection but not healing her.
so we took her for a 2nd and 3rd opinion.
a friend suggested a vet in west seattle which is about 23094523 miles away but the recomendation was very good, so eric took pawpi in. we found out that pawpi had lost about 2 pounds since this ordeal began. thats 28% of her body weight. that is like me loosing 38 pounds!!! they suggested the same thing as the others - CT scan. On the drive home, eric let pawpi roam freely in the back of the station wagon. it was a warm day and there was bumper to bumper traffic, so much of the drive, pawpi stood on her hind legs looking out the back window. a car with two ladies pulled up next and called over to sirus who has his window open "we like your cat!" to which sirus replied "her name is pawpi. we have two more cats named nadj and seamus mccat but they are mean cats" and i guess he went on and on.
eric scheduled a CT scan. pawpi was put under and they did the scan. then eric and the kids looked at the scan with the CT person. seamus said it was very cool. eric said it was kind of freaky. he said they looked at pawpi's head with no fur, then they took off her skin and her muscle so they could look just at her bones. they said her cheek bone was all messed up and there was obviously something wrong with it. they said there was no tumor, but some or part of her cheek bone would need to be removed. they also said she had an abnormally thin top of her head. we suspect that all that patting on her head we like to do is actually probably jiggling her brain.
back to the vets in west seattle, he took a look at her and did the surgery that day. the vet was scheduled to leave for vacation, but stayed so he could do the surgery and said it was a good thing they did it that day because her cheek bone was so messed up, that parts of it had turned black and when he pressed on it, puss came out. how horrible is that!! so he actually did more than he planned on when he was in there, scraping away the bad bone, taking biopsies and hopefully, hopefully making her better.
she came home yesterday and has been a little not like herself. she is normally the nicest most mellow cat, but she now does not like eric. she bolted out the door which is very unusual since pawpi doesn't run and eric had to chase her down, making a pro baseball out fielder's flying leap to grab her before she ran out into the street. she has also been running from him whenever she sees him.
its been 18 visits to the vets, 2 big surgeries, one CT scan, 3x under general anesthetic, multiple shavings and lancings, too many days to count with the cone and lots of trips in the box. i guess i would be pretty pissed off, too, but we are hoping its the pain medicine and that she will be back to her loving self in no time.
2 comments:
poor, poor pawpi.
you should update with new pictures! i thought she actually looked pretty good, if grouchy, maybe because the vets just went in there and cleaned everything up.
Post a Comment