Mortaine’s Blog

After the ultrasound, the lymph nodes look fine, and his heart looks normal. Yay!

However (I hate “however” in this situation), there seems to be some sort of mass on his right lung (the right side of his chest is what keeps filling up with fluid), which they’re going to look at more closely and get a pathology report tomorrow afternoon.

*crosses fingers and hopes for no cancer*

Let’s see if I can write this without crying….

Allegro is doing incrementally better. Progress is very slow. The fluid in his chest keeps coming back, especially in the right side. He hasn’t been eating, so they’re going to put in a feeding tube today.

The vet feels that his abdominal lymph nodes are enlarged, and so she’s doing a chest and abdominal ultrasound today. He’s had lymphocytes in the fluid in his chest, and if the nodes are enlarged, they’ll pull some tissue from them to biopsy to check for possible lymphoma.

Lymphoma, as you may know, is a fairly nasty systemic cancer. Unlike a standard tumor, it can’t be just sliced out and be done. If Allegro has it, that’s it. We won’t treat such a difficult cancer in a cat this old, just try to make him comfortable until he’s not anymore, and then let him go.

I am scared to death that this may be it. I love this cat so much, and everyone who has ever met him appreciates his sweet, loving nature.

Edit to add: I realized that my post doesn’t actually give any reason why he’s doing better. The fluid they pull from his chest no longer shows signs of bacteria, and yesterday he did eat a tiny amount of cheese. Not enough to keep him from the feeding tube, but something, at least, to help his spirits.

This is an archive of my shorter book reviews and notes, which historically have been posted over at the 50 Book Challenge on LiveJournal, but which I’m starting to move over here. I’m posting them with altered date-stamps, but they might show up in my LiveJournal cross-post anyway. Bear with me, please.

Note: Many of these books also have full reviews available in the book review podcast (RSS).
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Hey, ! I made a Knitten! It’s grey stripey, just like Alladin! I still have to stitch the face on– I’m thinking embroidery floss for that. I should’ve done it before sewing up the head, but…. meh. I wanted to see how it would work!

John knocked over my red wine tonight and it spilled everywhere. We are probably going to end up buying the copy of Blade: Trinity that we’d rented from the local DVD place. Whoops. It wasn’t even that great of a movie. Oh, well.

We watched Team America tonight, the unrated version. Um…. we’re trying to figure out what all the hype was about. I mean, seriously… the owner of the video store even warned us as we checked out that it would have had an “X” rating if it weren’t unrated. Yes, there were things in there I wouldn’t want a child watching, but… um…? Aside from one scene and a lot of profanity, it wasn’t any worse than a particularly raunchy South Park episode.

Tomorrow, I will upload pictures of the crafts I’ve done this weekend. Pathetically small number, as I haven’t been very diligent. On the other hand, I got to visit with my cat in ICU each day….

Which I guess is a cue to do an Allegro update. He’s doing better– today he even head-butted our hands. He’s purred for us both days, and the vet is fairly certain that it’s an infection (pyothorax), and that he’s septic, but will most likely make a full recovery if the fluid will slow its rate of accumulation.

Poor baby is absoluytely filthy and needs a bath very much. Yesterday and today, I’ve borrowed a brush from the vet and brushed out his rapidly-matting fur, but there’s not much I can do. He smells like pee and keeps getting food in his fur from laying down on it. They’re quick to change his bedding, but I’ll be really glad when he’s out of the oxygen cage. I’m sure he will be, too.

Alladin, meanwhile is doing his part to keep humanity safe from fur mousies everywhere!