...continued from issue 250...
 
Well, in brief, I took Slink home that night.  I had to feed her every three
hours around the clock <*yawn*> for a few days.  First, liquids via feeding
tube and eventually by mouth, though she didn't show much interest in eating.
In fact, I had a heck of a time getting her to eat anything at all by mouth
when it was time to start doing so - her only interests in food were Nutrical
and Linatone.
 
After a few days of this I was able to cut back feeding to every 5 or 6 hours
(only had to wake up once in the night - yippeee!) since Slink was getting
stronger and didn't need to be pumped with high calories.  She began to be
more alert, but still showed signs of bad pneumonia.  She had no trouble
at all removing her bandages one night at 1am...they were hanging from the
tube into her stomach which was half pulled out.  Slink was obviously in
pain and I had to hold her tightly to keep her from totally pulling her
feeding tube out.  OK... call a cab and zoom back to the Animal Medical
Center for another emergency visit.  The night crew knows me by now.
 
Quick attempts to fix the feeding tube failed, so after she spent the night
it was decided to remove the feeding tube and associated internal gadgetry.
I now was faced with figuring out how to coax Slink to eat - luckily she
developed a sudden fondness for her tube feeding formula, so I fed her lots
of that, and Nutrical and Linatone and bits of raw bacon.  I was encouraged
when she was brave enough to take a few licks of baby food, but the big
breakthrough came when I offered her a piece of chocolate cookie.  She
grabbed it eagerly and ate it in a flash.  The next day she started eating
her regular food (IAMS/ProPlan/Max Cat) just as if she never left it.
 
Now that she is eating regular food and is free of bandages, she is acting
more and more like a ferret every day.  She even did a scaled down bucking
ferret dance today!  But... a potentially serious problem remains.  It seems
that Slink is having great difficulty eating.  After nearly every bite, she
violently sneezes and coughs, often spraying food from her nose.  Certainly,
much of her food is getting to her stomach but a bit of almost every swallow
gets into her nose and her already damaged lungs.  It's a real chore for her
to eat and it's scary to watch.  The doctors aren't sure what is causing it,
(theories abound), so perhaps it's time to put a scope down her neck or take
a barium graph.  I'm not happy about putting her through anything else, but
she certainly cannot live like this either, so I'm hoping that a quick test
will point to a clear course of action.  Of course, I'll let you know.
 
Bill
 
[Posted in FML issue 0251]