mimo

this photo was taken a few months ago. mimo has a talent for sleeping in curly positions.

ray and i just got back from an emergency trip to the vet school in raleigh. it's 2:30am.

yesterday mimo was playing with a long string. strings are his favorite toy. this particular string was new to him, too, and therefore very exciting. the string had been used to keep a music portfolio tied closed. it was long (it kept brahms' bulky 4th symphony tied up)... maybe 3 feet in length.

sherpa found it intriguing, too, and they played tug-o-war with it for a while (5 MB .mov), and ray and i giggled as we watched them. then we turned our backs and went about our weekend chores. i went to retrieve the portfolio 15 minutes later and the string was missing.

we looked all over the house (behind every door, under every rug) but couldn't find the string. after 30 minutes of searching we finally came to the conclusion that mimo had somehow pulled it loose and likely swallowed it. he does enjoy chomping on the strings he plays with, so it wasn't a far flung idea.

so ray --being the protective pet owner he is-- immediately called our vet. at her home. she gave helpful advice and told us to watch out for vomiting, lethargy, loss of appetite... stuff like that. so we did.

and more than 24 hours went by without any symptoms. he was as playful as ever, trotting around the house and eating his food as normal. but tonight around 8pm --some 30 hours after the string went missing-- he vomited. a lot. so ray called the all-night emergency vet clinic, and they urged us to come in as soon as possible. they said that a string that long could easily impact his whole GI system and that waiting could be dangerous.

we scooped him up and ran down there. mimo was nervous and hissed a lot. he'd never been to this building before, and he didn't like it. when the vets took him for x-rays he started screaming... we've never heard him do that before. we were sad.

the doctor came back and said the x-rays suggested the possibility of impaction (though it was impossible to actually see the blockage itself). he couldn't confirm anything, but he showed us how areas of mimo's GI tract were distended... up to triple the normal size, he said. the doctor assumed that was due to gas being unable to pass through his intestines. if there was a blockage, he said, surgery would definitely be needed.

i've never much cared for the atmosphere at the emergency vet clinic. mimo was nervous there and i felt uncomfortable, too. it's not that i doubt the vets' skill at all; it's just an uninviting environment. so i asked the doctor (dr. duran) whether he would recommend we take mimo to the vet school. he recommended it, largely because mimo has the added complication of a heart murmur. (if mimo needed surgery to remove the string, the vet school has all of the equipment and medications needed to deal with a patient with a heart defect.)

so we scooped up our kitten (after paying the $140 bill) and ran him to raleigh. a team of 3 was there waiting for us and quickly got mimo into an exam room. i finally started to relax a little. i am much more comfortable at the vet school for some reason. (i guess because they took such good care of cornwallis a few months ago. in fact, the doctor in charge of mimo's case --dr. poulsen-- is the same doctor that treated corn dog initially!)

dr. poulsen reiterated what dr. duran said: that she couldn't find any concrete evidence that the string was lodged in his stomach --or anyhwere in his GI tract, for that matter-- but we did the right thing by coming in early. if the string was lodged past his stomach and into his intestines it could cause necrotization where the string rubbed up against that area. so catching it sooner was better than reacting later.

she suggested that an ultrasound be done right away (or as soon as radiology could get to the clinic... it is still the middle of the night, after all) to see if they could pinpoint a blockage. if so, then it's a no-brainer: he goes in for surgery... maybe as early as this morning. if no blockage is seen, then we need to consider whether he really swallowed the string at all, and weigh whether surgery is absolutely necessary.

it's tricky that way... if the ultrasound doesn't show anything conclusive and we wait to see how he does, he could be in danger of losing part of his intestines. but if he didn't swallow the string (but where the hell else could it be??) subjecting him to exploratory surgery --just to see if something is there-- would be unncessarily cruel to him, and costly to us.

so we're now left waiting for a phone call from dr. poulsen. there's a good chance she'll get the ultrasound done in the wee hours of the morning and will call with the results. i'm hoping it's conclusive. though i don't want mimo to have to undergo surgery, at least with a conclusive ultrasound we would know whether we were heading in the right direction.

and there's more bad news (as if our poor little boy isn't suffering enough, with a 3 foot string likely lodged in his gut, and all locked up in a cage in a hospital 20 miles away)... this is going to cost at least $1,000. minimum. and if he has to have surgery, we're looking at a total bill of $2,500 or so.

i'm going to have a hard time sleeping tonight.

update: 3:35am

dr. poulsen just called. an ultrasound was done. it showed some material in his stomach, but nothing in his intestines. (thank god.)

so what to do now? she suggests admitting him to the medicine department in the morning, where they can keep an eye on him and possibly do a "scope": anesthetizing him and going down his throat to retrieve the string.

we're to expect a call from his new doctor (in medicine) tomorrow morning around 10 or 11:00, and she'll have more information for us then.

Posted by xta at January 18, 2005 02:36 AM | TrackBack