God Save McQueen

McQueen has an abdominal mass. Just like mom. And once more, we are asking for your help.

Thank you all for helping us reach our original goal of $4800 The goal amount has been raised to account for unforeseen expenses that are already beginning to come up (special food, additional medication, emergency vet visits)

This past week McQueen’s health took a sudden turn. She is in need of urgent medical care and additional scans, biopsy, and surgery. With the right care, quickly, she should make a full recovery.

As anyone who has met McQueen knows, she is a chatty, friendly, loving goofball. An eternal kitten. Stealing your food. In your face. Forever forcing her way into your lap. No matter who comes around, that’s her new best friend. She sleeps with me every night. Plays fetch like a dog. She’s even toilet trained. She’s the best and weirdest cat on the planet. In fact, I doubt sometimes whether she's even a cat, or from this planet.

But on Tuesday she fell silent. She became lethargic, and over the next two days she stopped eating, and refused to move from her pillow, only getting up to use the toilet. I tried to bring her food and water, and bless her, she tried, but she struggled and it wasn’t enough. She dropped weight rapidly, and became severely dehydrated and weak. Her pupils were dilated. I called the vet Thursday and took her in Friday.

An exam and ultrasound revealed an abdominal mass that is causing her a lot of pain. (Something that I understand all too well.) It needs to be biopsied to determine if it’s cancer, and if operable, removed surgically as quickly as possible. A specialist ultrasound will answer this question for us.

Lab work was encouraging, as her organs are functioning normally. Major concerns are the dehydration and anemia due to her lack of food and water consumption. Her white blood cell count is also high and she has a heart murmur. Both may be due to stress, anemia, inflammation.

They gave her a subcutaneous fluid injection to hydrate her, an injection for nausea, and methadone for the pain. This brought her back from death's door.

McQueen is now on 3 medications. One for pain, one to help her eat, and another to keep it down. She needs constant care at this time to get her weight and hydration up, and she’s struggling.

Next steps are a specialist ultrasound to assess this mass for surgery, a biopsy to determine if cancer is present, as well as a new urinalysis. She currently has blood in her urine, which may be from the previous urine draw, but it’s concerning. So we need to be sure.

If McQueen can have surgery, our girl should make a full recovery and return to her happy self. Provided we can get her the care that she needs, there’s no reason that McQueen shouldn’t be able to live the full and happy life that she so deserves.

As anyone who has ever met this fuzzbucket knows, McQueen is so much more than a cat. She's my best friend. And I know that everyone says that about their pets, but I really wouldn't have survived the pandemic, my own health crisis, and a multitude of other unmentionable things, without her . We've been through so much together. I can't count how many times she's let me cry into her fur. She deserves to stick around. I can't let something as dumb as money be the thing that takes her too soon. She's worth a million bucks.

#GodSaveMcQueen

-Church

Fridays Tests and Treatment at Modern Animal:

Comprehensive Exam

Blood Pressure Measurement

CBC/CHEM17/LYTES - In-House Lab

URINALYSIS

Urine Specific Gravity

Cystocentesis, Ultrasound-Guided

Subcutaneous Fluid Administration

TT4 CHEM Individual slide

Ultrasound/FAST scan

Methadone Injection

Cerenia Injection

Cerenia Prescription

Mirataz Prescription

Buprenorphine Prescription

Up next:

Specialist Ultrasound

Specialist Ultrasound Guided FNA (biopsy)

Specialist Ultrasound Guided Cystocentesis

After these next steps, we hope we can schedule surgery.

(I will update this information as her treatment progresses)