Sunday, October 19, 2014

Just When You Thought It Was Safe

After Henry passed chemo round #3 with flying colors, we were feeling pretty good. Relieved and feeling pretty optimistic. The weekend was great, but come Tuesday everything changed. On Tuesday morning Henry started throwing up, then came the diarrhea. By the end of the day, Henry could not hold anything down. He would get a drink of water and immediately throw it right back up.

Since he could not keep anything down, we took him to the vet on Tuesday afternoon. The vet confirmed that Henry's stomach was certainly not happy. But he wasn't running a fever and everything else checked out in good order. Henry got an anti nausea shot to help him keep things down and some fluids to combat dehydration. We left hopping it was just a minor stomach bug.

Henry was under the weather on Wednesday and Thursday, but not throwing up. By Friday, we decided we weren't seeing enough of an improvement and we decided to take him back to the vet. A blood sample was drawn and Henry's white blood cells were off the chart. This helped us determine that we are battling some sort of infection.

Without the full blood test results back, we didn't know exactly what the issue was, but our vet was narrowing in on 2 different things. Either a mild case of pancreatitis or some sort of esophagus issue. Henry has had bad acid reflux since he was a puppy and lately his acid has been off the charts. And the last week or so, it has been particularly bad. So the esophagus issue was clearly in the running.

Both issues would receive the same type of treatment so it wasn't imperative that we had an exact diagnosis at that time. We left Henry with our vet to get IV fluids and a shot of antibiotics.

When we picked Henry up on Friday evening, he was looking a lot better! IV fluids really do wonders. But we knew we were not out of the woods yet and we knew that Henry's adrenaline rush of seeing us would wear off soon.

Our orders over the weekend were to keep Henry full of fluids. That would be what would help him start to feel better. We were to give him subcutaneous fluids once per day and monitor his drinking very closely. Then we would touch base with our vet on Monday and see how Henry was doing.

Friday night went well and Henry drank enough water on his own for us not to be concerned. Henry had a drink of water before bed and then he slept soundly that night.

Saturday was a different story. Henry had no interest in water. He had nothing to drink the entire morning and none of our coaxing was working. Since he wasn't drinking we decided to give him his fluids sooner rather than later in the hopes that they would help him feel better and he would be more likely to drink. Hours after we gave him his fluids he still wasn't interested in drinking anything. The silver lining was that he was resting soundly. Rest would also do him well so we let him sleep. We touched base with our vet on Saturday and decided to give him another round of the subcutaneous fluids on Saturday night to make up for his minimal water intake.

On Sunday, Henry drank a bit more, but he was still under the weather. We touched base with our vet again on Sunday evening and decided it was best to bring him in to the vet on Monday morning. The plan is to drop him and he will receive more IV fluids and have another blood test to see if his white blood cell counts have come down any.

So, Henry is at the vet right now and hopefully he is resting comfortably. I'll keep you updated as best as I can.