Dr. Death

I spent six hours yesterday at a critical care animal hospital with Kiggy. Dr. Bass wanted to have her heart looked at with an echocardiogram. I left work early to pick her up at Dr. Bass' office and took her to the hospital. I was glad to see her, she was quiet and still breathing heavily but seemed okay.

They took her back to do the echocardiogram and I waited and waited and waited. I saw family after family come in with their pets, mostly dogs, and leave without them. There were boxes of tissue on every table which was good as most people left in tears.

It's the type of place you go for emergencies and when your pet is very sick. Many of the people had to put their pets down. Many of the people were elderly and the blow was devastating.

The vet who was tending to Kiggy came to get me. He said that her heart looked okay, after which I breathed a sigh of relief. But he was not so optimistic. He said it may be cancer, a sarcoma that is causing this. They didn't see a tumor on the echocardiogram, but he thought it might still be likely. He was not confidant that it might be bronchitis as the fluid is outside of the lungs. He said the best scenario is that it was trauma. But I can't imagine how she could have hurt herself. There have been no cat fights and she's an indoor cat.

He had spoken to Dr. Bass who wanted to tap her chest to get the fluid out. They asked for permission to lightly sedate her and try. I said if Dr. Bass said it was safe then I was fine with it. I waited for several more hours in the waiting room seeing more people come through.

Finally the on call vet came to talk to me and said they could only get a small amount of fluid out and they would like to keep her overnight for observation. She could go home but they'd prefer she stay. I decided to bring her home. I couldn't stand the thought of putting her through more. I waited another hour as he finished up the paperwork and I got to take her home. They gave me a list of instructions of what to watch out for, mostly her breathing and her eating and drinking.

She was so happy to be home. I gave them all some canned food and she ate heartily. Her breathing was still labored, but no more coughing. We tried to have her sleep upstairs with us but she wanted to be downstairs on her ottoman. So I opted to sleep on the couch to monitor her breathing. She got up several times and sat in the kitchen. When I gave her more food, she ate readily.

I'm working from home today to keep an eye on her. My boss is wonderful, another cat lover. This is such a hard thing to go through. I'm not sure I can put her through too many more tests. Seeing her suffer is harder than knowing she'll die.