Quick Update

Hello all, I do not plan on making another post until December, or if I'm lucky a few days before. This month has been packed full of family emergencies and, sadly, the loss of a pet. I'm grateful that my family member has gotten some help, despite this we still really don't know what is going on, but cancer has been sort of ruled out so that's good.

My kitty Tiger started showing signs of being lethargic earlier this month. We got him to the vet, came to the conclusion that he was diabetic, and thought that would be the end of it. His bilirubin did not go down despite medicine that should have helped it. To spare a lot of details, this was over the course of 6 days, I'll skip to what we "know".

His bilirubin by the end by 27.2 with no indication on if there was a blockage (advanced ultrasound was inconclusive), his liver was very fatty, gallbladder was extended,  half of his pancreas was extended (most likely what threw off the signs of diabetes), his kidneys had incrementally shut down, and his white blood cell count was less than 300.

We could have done a feeding tube but our vet wasn't sure if he could even digest the food. Even if he would have made it through the minor surgery, it would take months for the bilirubin to come down if there wasn't a blockage, but getting the amount of calories he needed would have been very difficult. Exploratory surgery was brought up but, where a healthy pet has a 50/50, he had a 20-30% chance of survival but no guarantee what they would be able to do would work. [EDIT: I did forget to mention that the vet also only gave him a 5% chance of survival with the surgery.]

We decided that the best could of action would be to let him pass peacefully on November 14th. Since then it's been very difficult to cope with the loss. I know we did everything we could but, the fact that he lost him when he was only 7.5 years old, has made it so much harder. There were so many things that we had hoped to include him in our life and, quite frankly, never questioned that he would be there.

So, I do hope to get back on soon. I needed time to be able to grieve and not worry about other things in my life. I'm really grateful I wasn't working because otherwise I would have to be working on top of this. I hope you had a great Thanksgiving and make sure to hug your pets (unless it's a fish, then I don't think they'll appreciate that as much).