Hi to everyone and thank you again to all of you who have emailed me
personally.  My thoughts are with all of you who have sick fuzzies.
 
The last couple weeks have been pretty trying for Casper and I, probably
more for him, but I am happy to report that he is doing well.  My last
update was last Monday.  At that point he still wasn't eating, the hairball
hadn't moved through and the internal bleeding appeared to be stopping.
 
Tuesday he decided to bite me a couple times - something he has never done.
I figured it was because he was so hungry and aggravated.  I called my vet
and she had me bring him in at 8:30 Wednesday morning.  She did another
xray and you could see this white spot in his stomach which confirmed our
thoughts that this was a blockage.  She asked me what I wanted to do, if I
wanted to keep trying the "safe" route of Vaseline and petromalt or if I
wanted to do surgery.  I told her that I thought we had waited long enough
and that it was time to do surgery.  She agreed and did warn me that even
though his blood count was significantly better, he was still a surgery
risk due to him being anemic, but would get worse if we waited, since he
wasn't eating.
 
She immediately took him in and operated.  Now, why do I love my vet?  Her
waiting room was filled with patients and she had a full schedule all day.
She canceled ALL of them through 1:00 so she could do the surgery and keep
a close eye on him while he came out of the anesthesia.  She had everyone
in the waiting room either reschedule or leave their pet until later that
day.  I really don't know too many vets that would do this!
 
She called me at 11:30 to let me know he came through and was waking up.
She removed a HUGE hairball from his intestines/stomach.  Despite the fact
that I give him hairball remedy during the shedding season, we decided that
this will be a weekly thing now.
 
He's home and not real happy.  He so wants to eat until bursting and get
out to play, but I have to keep him quiet and feed him a softened/liquid
diet every two hours until Wednesday this week.  I have been letting him
get out to wander around a little bit, the "sick" cage is so small that
he was ready to stretch out some.
 
Again, thank you to everyone who emailed me.  He's doing great, and other
than my wallet, so am I!
 
Lisa - The much relieved mother.
Casper "Mom would you just PLEASE give me the food bag!  I'm starving!
Rosco "Hey Mom! MOM! Remember me?  The cute, fat, healthy one!  Can I GET
some attention here!?  Gee, you'd think he was sick or something."
[Posted in FML issue 3410]