I miss Patches

This morning, I had to drop off my [parents'] little dull-black coloured fur ball to the v-e-t to get knocked out.

He had to have an x-ray taken of his bladder, because we noticed he has had blood in his urine the last few weeks. The last few weeks consisted of the following: The v-e-t gave him antibiotics but they didn't do anything, or at least nothing to fix the real problem: he had a stone in his bladder. They used a sample of his urine (another story) to determine that this was the issue, by doing a urinalysis to see if there was crystals in it. Then they informed us our options:

1) try to do a regular x-ray while Patches is awake, to try to see if there was stones in his bladder or not;
2) anesthetize Patches, inject air into his bladder, x-ray. The air would show up dark on an x-ray, and make it easier to distinguish between the white-appearing stones, and normally white appearing organs.

Since if we were to go with option #1, and it didn't show anything, we would have to go to step #2 to ensure there wasn't anything, we skipped #1, and (easily) arranged it so that if they did indeed find the stones, they would call me and let me know, before just going right into surgery. They did call, and let me know that they found a large stone, and that they would be taking it out soon.

While I had the v-e-t/s-u-r-g-e-o-n on the phone, I also asked when I could take him home, and what other steps would be required to prevent another one from forming. (It was obviously diet- related, and when I called at 5:30 to see how he was doing, they asked me all sorts of questions about his diet, food intake, treats, etc). I was informed that we should be cutting back on the amount of treats we give him, and also NO MORE HUMAN FOOD!!!

Anyone who has ever been in our house has undoubtedly noticed the two beady eyes that stare up at you if you are eating, or are in the general vicinity of the kitchen. Mostly, it will be hard for us to not feed him extra food, because the steroids he is on for previous breathing-related problems makes him hungry. Knowing that alone makes it difficult not to give him small pieces of meat... cheese... bread... veggies... okay, okay, anything we happen to be eating, including very rarely, a small bit of chocolate.

Yeah, so to fast-forward to today: Patches ended up having surgery to remove the stone, and I can't pick him up until tomorrow afternoon.

I wish animals didn't have to go through this crap. They just don't understand why they have to go to the "evil" vet who knocks them out and makes them hurt when they wake up...

I wish I could feel the pain instead of him having to. At least they would give me meds for it if needed. For Patches, it must be like being tortured.
I know it is the best thing for him, to get the surgery done, but still. He doesn't know and understand that. I think he thinks we are doing this to him because he was bad or something.

I will feel better when i see him tomorrow.

:-)

-B

Oh, and we are out of our house in the south... got full dd back!! yay, pay bills...