Fezzik, who simply goes from one set of symptoms to another, has had it
happen again!  We ended up at the emergency clinic tonight, and will
probably be seeing our regular vet first thing in the morning, but any
advice would still be appreciated.
 
Basically, Fez had been having some small, black, mucousy stools awhile
back.  We started him on carafate, in case it was ulcers, but that only
made them less black.  So we concluded that the most likely possibility
was proliferative bowel disease/campylobacter, and started him on
chloramphenicol.  We saw a definate improvement in his stools, and he
started putting on weight again.
 
It's been 2 1/2 weeks since we started the meds; we have a 1/2 week to go.
However, he recently started losing weight again.  Furthermore, his rib
cage looks "pushed out" a bit relative to his waist - it could just be the
loss of weight at his weight, or perhaps his spleen is enlarged?  We were a
bit worried about his eating, and decided to supplement his food with
hand-feeing again...  Then, today, we started seeing some diarrhea - green
liquid stuff.  We were worried about dehydration and decided to give him a
dose of pepto - he's taken it in the past, so we didn't forsee any
problems.  (And no, it wasn't out of date!) All of the sudden, he started
vomiting and clawing at his mouth, something he's NEVER done before.  He
also ran to the litter box, and let loose a lot of mucous.  The vomiting
and sudden diarrhea seemed to be similar to when he had a vaccine reaction
a year or so ago.  Worried that this was an emergency, we rushed him to the
emergency clinic (it was about 9 pm).  By the time we got there, he'd
stopped pawing at his mouth, but was still vomiting.  His temp was 102; he
seemed tired, but not completely exhausted (as he had after the vaccine
reaction); his heart rate was 216.  By this point it was clear he wasn't
about to go into shock, so the vet (who did not inspire a lot of
confidence, might I add) gave him some fluids, and centrine (to help keep
the vomiting down, I believe), and told me to see the vet in the morning
(sigh...  $90 for that?).  He's resting now, but we have no idea what the
problem was...  He hadn't gotten into anything that could have caused an
allergy - we'd just woken him a few minutes before to hand-feed him and
give him the pepto.  This doesn't sound to me like it should be related to
his other problems, though, either...  ???
 
Confused, worried, and obviously long-winded,
Rochelle
[Posted in FML issue 1287]