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Update on Vandal
Jun. 18th, 2008 10:16 pmVandal made it through the night. This was by no means a guarantee. Vandal's blood sugar crashed when they took him off the IV glucose (and glucose boluses) around 4 am after six stable blood glucose tests. So Julia took him back to our regular vet as the emergency vet is only open 5:00 pm to 8:00 am (the hours not covered by local vets).
Vandal threw us a new curve ball -- his hemocrit (measure of the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood) was 8. While it should be above 30, his is normally in the low 20s because of the renal failure (kidneys produce the hormone to stimulate blood production and kidney failure causes this hormone to be low as well as some damage to red blood cells). The vet said he shouldn't be able to try to stand. So Julia took him for an ultrasound to see if we could figure out what was wrong before we paid $500 dollars for a transfusion. The ultrasound was negative -- no free blood and no tumors. Hmmmmm. We authorized the transfusion and his hemocrit came up to 20. Yea!!!
At this point, our regular vet has admitted his confusion. He won't try to predict if Vandal will make it or not, because, as he put it, he's "had Vandal at death's door three times now and Vandal refuses to die." At one point the vet's office told us he had black tarry stools (a sign of gastroinstestinal bleeding), but they were wrong. The stools were dark but not tarry.
Unfortunately, Vandal's blood sugar continues to crash every time they stop the glucose drip. So he's at the emergency vet tonight because none of the vets in town does overnight stuff. However, he's started to purr and has stood up on his own power (though rather quivery). Tonight's the big night; hopefully he'll rally.
S
Vandal threw us a new curve ball -- his hemocrit (measure of the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood) was 8. While it should be above 30, his is normally in the low 20s because of the renal failure (kidneys produce the hormone to stimulate blood production and kidney failure causes this hormone to be low as well as some damage to red blood cells). The vet said he shouldn't be able to try to stand. So Julia took him for an ultrasound to see if we could figure out what was wrong before we paid $500 dollars for a transfusion. The ultrasound was negative -- no free blood and no tumors. Hmmmmm. We authorized the transfusion and his hemocrit came up to 20. Yea!!!
At this point, our regular vet has admitted his confusion. He won't try to predict if Vandal will make it or not, because, as he put it, he's "had Vandal at death's door three times now and Vandal refuses to die." At one point the vet's office told us he had black tarry stools (a sign of gastroinstestinal bleeding), but they were wrong. The stools were dark but not tarry.
Unfortunately, Vandal's blood sugar continues to crash every time they stop the glucose drip. So he's at the emergency vet tonight because none of the vets in town does overnight stuff. However, he's started to purr and has stood up on his own power (though rather quivery). Tonight's the big night; hopefully he'll rally.
S