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.