Kender's Tripawd Journey

After 5 days of antibiotics, Kender’s leg was getting worse.  The lump area seems slightly larger and warmer and the rest of the paw is noticeably swollen.  I tried to get an appointment with our usual vet, but she doesn’t have an opening until Tuesday afternoon.  I didn’t want to see the same vet I saw on Monday, so I took her to a different office where a friend of mine worked as a vet tech.  They requested and reviewed the records from my usual office and did a thorough exam on her.  The vet felt the best course of action would be to sedate her and lance/drain the “abscess”.  Now I’m wishing I had just done this in the beginning, but was hoping to spare her going through this!

The vet said it looked pretty atypical when she drained it. Just some bloody fluid and none of the usual pus.  Said it could just be because she’s already been on antibiotics for a while. But there was also a harder area that she said could be an underlying problem, but is hard to tell with all the inflammation without doing further tests. If it isn’t vastly improved in a week, she recommends doing a biopsy and/or x-rays to see if those can give some answers.  Her kidney levels were also slightly high on her pre-op blood work.  Not enough to be really worried about now, but we should recheck them in a few months to make sure they aren’t getting worse.  She gave us a couple days worth of pain meds and said to continue the antibiotics previously prescribed.

I’m starting to feel worried about this whole thing now.  I had a good cry with Matt tonight…I really feel like we might be dealing with something more serious.  I hope I’m wrong.

 

Kender’s leg hadn’t really changed much over the long weekend.  I had given her some Benadryl and it seemed like it maybe helped a tad with the swelling, but the main lump in her ankle was still there and felt slightly hot now.  I called our vet’s office first thing in the morning.  The vet we usually see didn’t have any open appointments for 2 days, so I agreed to see one of her associates that morning instead.

The vet seemed somewhat distracted as I was relaying to her how/when I first noticed this and that I suspected some sort of bite or sting.  On two separate occasions she asked me the same question twice.  She said it was most likely an abscess from a prior wound that we hadn’t noticed until now, most likely from a fight with another cat since I’d told her she goes outside.  I told her I thought that was highly unlikely because there was NO scabbing or signs of any wound on her, there are no other cats in our neighborhood except for our other cat and she never leaves our fenced backyard.  This discussion took about 5 mins.  She told me she was going to prescribe antibiotics and offered to lance/drain it that day as well or gave me the option of trying the antibiotics first.  Since I wasn’t convinced it was an abscess, I took the less invasive approach and took antibiotics only.  She offhandedly mentioned we could do an x-ray to rule anything else out, but didn’t elaborate from there.  The next 5 mins she spent lecturing me on her being a few months late on her vaccines, especially since I let her outside and that we should for sure be vaccinating her at her recheck appointment in 2 weeks.  Overall, I got the impression she was more worried about the vaccines than the lump on her leg.

I’m to give the antibiotics until they are gone and come back in 2 weeks for a recheck, or sooner if things get worse.

[Note:  Posts from here until 7/25/14, the day I started this blog, are back-dated from facebook posts/personal recollection.  Kender is my 14 year old gray tabby DSH.]

Not a great way to start the holiday weekend…just let Kender inside before bed and noticed one of her back legs is really swollen and tender. She looked a little glassy/weepy eyed too. Think she got bit by something.  She stayed out way later than usual tonight.

Upon closer inspection, it isn’t so much swollen…more like a lump…wasp maybe??  Thankfully, she doesn’t have the symptoms of a black widow bite (at least according to what I found on Google).  

[Written on 7/25/14 – back-dated to 7/2/14 to appear first chronologically.]

This is my very first ever blog post and I never imagined I’d have one!  I’m also a very bland writer 😛  But seeing how much all of these blogs have helped give me confidence and peace these last few days has inspired me to take a chance and start a blog about our journey where my 14 year old cat, Kender, will most likely be having her left rear leg amputated next week.  I hope our story can help future potential tripawd pawrents as much as everyone else’s stories have helped me!

 

I just wanted to make a quick post since I’ve seen others mention it might get deleted if nothing is posted.  I’ll write a more substantive post tonight after the kiddos are in bed.