Friday, August 31, 2007

Cancel August, Please.

What started out so promisingly dwindled into a morass. I believe that Scruffy's got something going on with his ears again - especially the right one. Numbers have been horrible. Horrible. New R and Levemir made virtually no difference, although I am curious about the fact that I accidentally used the old vial of Humulin R this morning, and it seemed to have a whole lot more activity than the new vial of Novolin R......

I took him to Dr. G. yesterday. It was another episode of vicious hissing, spitting, clawing and biting. I don't know if there's a reason why Scruffy has suddenly become such a lousy patient. He was always so tolerant of everything a vet wanted to do. Maybe he's holding the two dentals against Dr. G, or something. Whatever, it was not possible to use the long tube-ish instrument to look into his right ear, which seems to be the primary source of distress. I've been using the Malaseb Flush almost every day, to Scruffy's extreme dismay, and until tonight, I haven't seen any sign of the brown waxy stuff that used to be in his outer ear. There was a tiny bit tonight. Dr. G. gave me two syringes of a thick yellowish metacam to give him every other day until Monday, in the hopes that it would perform some anti-inflammatory function on his ear, and that reduced pain would make him more pleasant, I guess. He gave him the first dose in the office, which didn't seem to have any particular effect. I don't think that reducing pain is the solution to this, personally. I believe that its original cause was the weeks of Clindamycin when he had the dental in the middle of July, and that now we're going to have to do something to treat that.

It's clear that there's something seriously wrong now. Scruffy's just not himself. He hardly sleeps on my leg any more. He's going off by himself more and more to nap, instead of laying in his kitty pi. While I haven't noticed anything particularly odd about his appetite, he has lost three ounces in the two weeks between vet visits.

I tried to call today to see if the veterinary dermatologist who treated his ears before might have an appointment available, but they're already closed until next Tuesday because of Labor Day. Not a very good time of year to need veterinary treatment, I guess. I am seriously concerned about this whole situation. I think he needs to be examined - and I have no idea how that can be done, given his unpleasant behavior at the vet's - and I think he has to have some sort of treatment to get rid of whatever's going on with his ear. We've wasted a whole month now with terrible numbers and a miserable cat, and I'm scared to death of ketones and DKA.

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