Post Op Day 2 and 3

Day 2 was a bit easier to handle for everybody. Peanut spent the night just curled in a ball trying not to move a lot. On the 6^th late at night he did manage to walk over to the litter box and attempt to go to the bathroom. He did need support standing long enough to empty his bladder, but we made it work and baby wipes work great getting litter off fur and cleaning up the urine that gets on his fur.

Peanut was more mobile this morning and he did walk across our house and try and get in the room where his litter box is usually located and then when he didn’t get in there he decided to sleep under our kitchen table which we couldn’t allow him to sleep under for safety reasons mostly I couldn’t get to him if he needed help getting up or if he didn’t make it to the box in time. We had to put up a small garden fence to keep him from heading under there. We had another appointment at 2 pm for a slow releasing pain medication and removal of his fental patch which was keeping his appetite suppressed which had us worried since he didn’t really eat the night before his surgery. About 3 hours after it was removed was the first time he showed interest in eating some food and went to town on about an ounce of food. A bit before his appointment he decided to get up and use his litter box on his own and didn’t need any help but it tired him out and he needed another nap before he could go to his little bed. So we moved him to it so he would be more comfortable. The slow releasing medication seemed to be helping a lot more than his patch probably because he is more like himself just quite high. The ice pack that was sent home was just too heavy for his hips and we have resorted to using some cold eye masks that I had a home. We just place them around his incision site nothing directly on it because it hurts him. He does have some bright red spots right about his hips more on his right side than the other but the vet is not to concerned about it since nothing is warm and they are not swollen. He was impressed that Peanut was up and walking without much help 2 days out.

Day 3 was a very good day for us. He didn’t seem to hurt as much and today he attempted to jump over the garden fence so that was removed and placed just around the table where it reaches the chairs and keeps him from getting crazy ideas. He has spent most of the day just sitting and sleeping. Tomorrow he starts some real rehab where he will be forced to bend his legs in a bicycle manner so the muscles start working again. I know that will not be a good day for us. He hasn’t eaten a ton today but since he is not moving a lot the vet said he probably wouldn’t be eating much. Don’t need tons of food if you not spending energy. We had to swap out his e-collar for a larger one because he figured out how to get his face around the other one. This is a problem we were hoping to avoid but we were prepared to face it.

I honestly was worried about putting him thru this surgery and what kind of return of mobility we would have but this morning I saw him grab his leg from behind the knee and pull his foot towards him he hasn’t done that since last year. He is going to be the kitten we adopted and he will have the life that he deserves. I know that the price tag is a large expense for a lot of people but just looking at him walking and becoming normal again and I know it is all worth it. 

Post Op Day 1

Peanut was dropped off at the hospital yesterday for his blood work and then surgery. He was in surgery for approximately 2 hours and 15 minutes and had no complications from the anesthesia or pain meds. Yesterday filling out his intake forms was very difficult because they ask you as the pet parent how far do you want to take this if things go bad. It was a very tough choice because when is enough and what kind of risks are we looking at. Our family chose to go with save his butt at all cost because we had just lost another pet and our older cat was having a hard time dealing with that death and I couldn’t lose both of them so quickly. We had an amazing surgical team and I spoke with our surgeon at around 2 pm and we were able to see Peanut at 6 pm while he was still mostly sedated.

He was released at 2 pm with tons of aftercare instructions. He is not able to stand up and use his litter box so I was taught how to encourage him to pee. He has come home with an ice pack, anti-inflammatory pills and instructions to make sure he didn’t lay more than 2 hours on each side. I had expected him not being able to use the box because he doesn’t have a ton of muscle in his leg currently and when they got in there it was discovered his muscle atrophy was even worse than they had expected so he will have a longer recovery time to learn to use them again. I am supposed to hold him up and support his body weight so he will start learning to stand up again and support his own weight.

He has been trying to walk around the house all afternoon trying to find the right place to put his head down. He has a Fentanvl patch on to help with the pain and will be receiving an injection for pain tomorrow. So far we have had the blood curdling cries of pain which send a shiver up your spine and attempts to eat his sutures but nothing too extreme for a cat who will be learning to walk again.

His rehab will be using ice pack to keep the swelling down and rotating his leg like you are riding a bicycle for 5 minutes twice a day on each side as tolerated. With Peanut being so food motivated we will be using treats to get him to stretch the muscles down his side. He doesn’t seem to want to eat anything currently but that could be his pain meds wearing off. 

The day the world imploded on us

“Your cat has fractures in both his hips”

Those are the worst words to hear when you have brought your cat in for hypercalcemia. The thought that start running are the worst about how you could have done things differently for them. In August of 2015 we had brought in our cat for a dental cleaning and check-up. The vet ran normal blood work before anesthesia and discovered our cat’s ionized calcium level was 1.69 mmol/L which was above normal and had been rising for the past 2 months. We had been left in the dark until that exact moment. First it’s a feeling of anger because you feel like you should have known something was wrong with your little fur baby, then you move on to being pissed off at the vets for not giving you a heads up that his tests were showing an increased level.

We were giving a referral to a local specialty vet so we could have more specialized tests done and start that wait. I call them that very day and got an appointment with an internal medicine specialist which was just scary thinking about it. They book up so fast it was a 3 week wait and wonder what was going on with my cat. I googled everything I could find out on hypercalcemia and just scared myself to death with what he could have and what choices we would have to make.

When the appointment finally came around and they were asking about other things that were going on with him and I told them that he had been diagnosed in December with what appeared to be arthritis in both of this hips. They wanted to get another set of x-rays and let the surgeon take a look at them. It was the longest 30 minutes of my life waiting for them to draw his blood and take another set of x-rays. When the vet came back in she gave us the bad news that he had 2 slipped caps in this femur. He had been living with basically 2 broken hips for almost 9 months, my heart just sunk that I had let it go on for this long just believing he was just unlucky to have gotten arthritis as a young one.

The vet brought in the surgeon to talk us through this diagnoses and needing a double FHO surgery but not being comfortable with doing it because of the calcium numbers. He explained everything that was wrong and about how common it is in young neutered male cats. It was so much information to take in hearing my cat needed to undergo a major surgery on both of this hips, hearing that first they have to find out why his calcium is so high maybe its cancer.

That night I googled everything on FHO surgery and what the recovery was like, what I could expect for cost, what kind of life he would have, and what feelings I should have. There actually wasn’t a lot of real life experiences online for cats. It just left me wondering about all the questions I couldn’t get answers to. I cried so hard the next day thinking of the worse that could happen. Would I have to make a horrible choice because this was something that wasn’t possible. How do you make that choice? How do you know when to stop? I made my husband promise me that we would give the cat a chance at being a normal boy again, to be the kitten we had adopted 2 years ago.

A week later we got the good news he didn’t have cancer just a change in diet would probably fix the calcium and then we could do his hips. 5 weeks later we had a recheck and the doctor told us the surgeon was okay with his numbers and the surgery. We scheduled our consult to talk about what was required for surgery and what recovery time we are looking at. The surgery is projected to cost us about 35 hundred dollars and he will be having both of his hips done at the same time to force him to use his legs and start the healing process. Our surgeon wants him confined to a small room with no jumping or playing with his older sister for 10 days which will be tough as we live in an apartment but his recovery is the most important thing to me right now. He will stay overnight to receive pain medication after the surgery but we will be able to see him that night and pick him up the next day in the afternoon. We are speeding towards his surgery date November 5^th.