Nov 042013
 

Out of nowhere, we’ve lost Ares. The old guy was limp, cold, and unresponsive Saturday morning. Rushed in to the vet, found out he was at the tail end of a series of hypoglycemic seizures. They stabilized him with a heatpack (we’d given him one for the drive to the vet, too, from Zoe’s old supplies), a dextrose shot, and an IV catheter. He seemed to be perking up and improving, but he still wouldn’t eat.

After about 8 hours, he suddenly took a turn for the worse. He began bleeding in his intestines, as had Jack-Jack and Zoe when we lost them. We’d hoped because he was already in intensive care that there might be some hope, but after consulting with our primary vet and doing more bloodwork, we had to make the choice to let him go; his body was shutting down, and his organ functions were all over the place. When we arrived back at the vet to be with him in his last moments, he was obviously in discomfort and not at all his usual self.

He has been buried next to Draco, with a Kong toy between the two of them; their rivalry in stealing those from one another can continue now.

RIP little guy. I’m just happy you had such a long, rich life, and that I got to see you playing so happily for so many evenings.

Feb 032013
 

Well, that was an unnecessarily exciting weekend, in the worst way.

Minion had a perforated intestine! It perforated at some point several hours after the time when we rushed him to the vet, by her estimation…and he came within hours of dying from it. He also nearly died while she was fixing it, being in shock and suffering from sepsis in his abdominal cavity from the food and fluids that leaked out. His systolic BP should’ve been around 90…it was 25. It’s extremely lucky that he pulled through with all that suddenly went wrong. Our vet and her tech assistant are just plain awesome. A huge thank you to Dr. Powers and Christina, they saved Minion’s life again!

He came home this afternoon, and is recovering nicely thus far. He gets antibiotics and pain meds for a week or so, and goes back for a recheck in 2 weeks. We’re also having the 4 inches of his intestine that were perforated (and thus removed) sent for a biopsy, as they had small white dots that could be indicative of lymphoma. Better to know there so we can put him on some meds to keep it (hopefully) from happening again.

He also had a small pancreatic tumor as suspected (the insulinoma diagnosis) that was in an extremely difficult to reach place. She was able to remove that as well.

Thank you to everyone who contacted us over the weekend to inquire how he was doing. Hopefully his recovery goes without issue, and in the future months our old man can enjoy a less eventful time of things.

Feb 012013
 

Well…Minion just has all the luck. Or lack thereof. Poor guy was crying last Monday, keeping one eye shut. Nothing wrong with the eye that we could see that night….but the following evening he started developing a white spot in it, and was still keeping it closed. Off to the vet we go! He had an abscess forming in his eye, likely from it getting scratched during play.

We got him on some pain meds, and topical eye drops. A week later and its looking great! He has to keep getting eyes drops for several more days to be safe, but he gets to keep seeing at least!

But now for the bad news…his blood sugar has gone topsy turvy, so he’s developed insulinoma. And…he has a mass in his abdomen. He doesn’t like it being probed. We don’t know what it is, and the only way to find out is surgery. And our boy is getting old and less likely to handle that well, especially since he just had a round back in September.

So Minion gets daily meds for the insulinoma, and we have some more worrying and stress over how best to care for the little guy. Not a good day for me so far.

The only bright spot of the visit is Zoe, who went along for her checkup as well. Her blood work is improved from last month, so she’s holding on strong and doing better than expected at least.