Our Frodi :-)

It's been a rough couple weeks to be a cat in the Geiger house :-(  I had to take Frodo to the vet today; he's been losing weight, has been more lethargic, and last night I noticed his breathing seemed to be labored.  The vet heard fluid in his lungs when she listened to them; they did a chest xray which showed a pleural effusion (for you non-medical types, that just means fluid surrounding the lungs/heart).

My options at that point were to allow her to tap the fluid out to see what type of fluid it was, which would then help make decisions as to the next step...or well, you know...that other option.  He's 17 years old, has had a good life, was never sick....do we go all out and treat him.... do we say, there's no reason to make him suffer and say, it's time....or do we try and treat him conservatively for a few weeks and see how he does??

The vet felt confident that if she could examine the fluid, it would help her figure out why he had this effusion.  She said the main three reasons they develop are either just an accumulation of lymph fluid, a cardiac problem, or cancer.  The nurse in me decided having a better idea of why/how it got there would help me make the decision as to what the next step should be, so I allowed her to tap him.

While she was doing that, I made a few calls, spoke to the kids and we made the tough, but unanimous decision that if the news was not good, we'd have him euthanized.  Frodo holds a special place in all our hearts, especially mine, it was gonna be tough if that's what it came to; fortunately I got a bit of a reprieve today.

She tapped off 90 cc of fluid and by the looks of it, she felt fairly confident it's cardiac related, which should respond to a diuretic (water pill).  She can't promise it won't re-accumulate, but the Lasix should help keep it under control.  The interesting thing was that after she got rid of the fluid, his breathing was much less labored.  Even now, he looks much more comfortable.

They also drew blood and those results won't be back until tomorrow or Friday, so we could still be looking at more bad news, but at this point, we'll try the diuretic and hope for the best :-)  Our buddy's been a good friend to all of us, we're not quite ready for him to go live with Sassy, but we also don't want him to suffer.  Time will tell.

The good news was I wrapped the teeny tiny pill in a teeny tiny piece of hard salami tonight and he woofed it down!  Hopefully he's not up peeing all night...LOL!!