Skye's Surgery and Hospital Stay
About a month ago, we noticed a small red spot on our male domestic shorthair named Skye. We monitored it, and about a week and a half ago it started to grow. It grew very fast, and we decided to try and get him into the vet.
7/25/19 - Vet informs us they will be able to get him in on Monday, the 29th of July, and we make the appointment.
7/26/19 - The mass on his arm began to bleed but stopped very quickly, and we only knew because of the blood on the cushion of the swing on the front porch.
7/27/19 - I came downstairs to find a few blood spots and the cat frantically licking the mass on his arm. This scared us very much, so we called the emergency animal hospital here and brought him right in. At the visit, they told us it looks to be a mass and will have to be surgically removed and sent in for testing. They recommend we bandage it up now, and get him into the appointment on monday, the 29th.
We bring him home with a full arm bandage on and he shakes it right off, and after being squeezed and agitated at the vet, it bleeds profusely. We manage to get him back into the vet rigtht away, and we ask to just do the surgery at the more expensive 24/7 facility, and they bandage it back up and send us home as it wasn't bleeding that bad at this point.
As soon as he gets home, he shakes his arm and the bandage flies off, again, bleeding profusely. He licks it and licks it and it begins to stop bleeding, so we decide to bandage him again and watch him overnight in our bathroom. Everything looks good so after a couple hours my mother and I went to sleep. I wake up to use the bathroom and he managed to get the bandage off again and had lost a significant amount of blood again.
My mother goes to store to buy surgical tape and gauze pads and neosporinto bandage the cat up again, and hope that this bandage will hold. We eventually manage to bandage the mass on his arm to stop him from licking it, and wrapped it tight enough on his arm to stop him from getting bandages off. Sunday goes smoothly, and monday rolls around.
7/29/19 - We bring Skye into our vet for a pre-surgery appointment. They run some tests and find out that he is anemic. They refuse to believe it's a loss of blood from something so small on his arm, so they run further tests and send him the 24/7 facility to monitor him and possibly do a blood transfusion. Poor guy :( We decide to do a small ultrasound to make sure there isn't anything causing internal bleeding, as they still do not believe something so small could have caused that much blood loss to induce anemia.
7/30/19 - They continue to monitor him, and watch his red blood cell numbers to see if they are going up. At this point, they started to climb a bit. They want to do Xrays and a more thorough ultrasound to see if they can catch anything wrong with him. Again, they don't believe the small mass bleeding could have caused all this. They run an ultrasound and xrays and everything looks great, he's a healthy 1 year old cat. They think he might be able to go into surgery the next day if his numbers continue to climb, which is a relief for us, both medically and financially.
7/31/19 - His numbers dropped or stayed down and they don't feel comfortable doing the surgery in his current state. They recommend a blood transfusion and surgery if it goes well. We give them the okay, and they do the blood transfusion. Transfusion goes well, but there a couple dogs that come in for emergencies and the surgery gets pushed back a day.
8/1/19 - The manage to get him in for surgery sometime around early afternoon. The surgery goes great, and he is awake. They leave my mother a message saying, "I don't think he even knows he went in for surgery! he's doing wonderful and should be able to come home in the morning" What a relief! My little bud is okay.
8/2/19 - Skye is home!!!!! He has a cone on and is very unhappy with it, but I have a few days off work and my mom has PTO she can take so we can have someone with him at all times for the next week or two while his wound heals. The mass was sent in for testing to find out what it was, so let's pray and hope that it turns out to be benighn.
My mother works at hobby lobby and I work for a moving company. This all had to go on her credit card, as there isn't much of a savings to be taken from. I'm sure this won't get funded all the way, but anything will help. I'll be posting pictures and documenting his recovery and his progress and the results of the test of the mass as well as another test they ran. The other test is a "mycoplasma PCR" test, to see if there is an underlying infectious cause of the anemia.
Thank you guys for reading this, and anything helps! We'll be plucking away at the bill as there becomes extra money. It's all worth it, as Skye is a wonderful companion and I very much missed him sleeping next to me and watching shows with me at night.
