Been a difficult few days. Remi was vomiting on Saturday, and not being able to get it under control we took him into the emergency clinic. He has a bout of pancreatitis, so very dehydrated, but the internal medicine vet was seeing some strange heartbeats (missing beats), so they were not too keen on giving him IV fluids until they could get a cardiac assessment.
No cardiologists locally, so Sunday we drove him 2 hours to another emergency clinic near Toronto...in the car he was very lethargic.
They took him straight to the ICU, and his breathing was shallow and raspy - he likely aspirated some of the water he threw up as we were trying to get him to drink a little, so they had him on oxygen, and eventually IV fluids. He had a cardiac workup yesterday, and we already knew he had a heart murmur (common in sighthounds) and he has a mitral valve issue. He's off the oxygen now and his lungs sound clear, but still not eating at the last update. They said he seems perkier, so he seems to be getting better, but not out of the woods yet. Waiting for a call with another update today.
On top of these issues, he has Cushing's disease, and we have been controlling it now for about 18 months. Initially there was no sign of any changes to the adrenal gland, but when they were checking him over this last time, there are some anomalies on the gland, and they aren't sure if it's cancer at this point. He also has some bladder stones to add to the list. So if he recovers from this latest thing, we'll have to deal with all that after. We had to have the conversation about a DNR, which is always tough - we told them not to take any extraordinary measures. Doesn't look like that will come into play right now, but we'll see how he recovers and go from there.
We are missing him terribly, but know he's in good hands. Maeve seems a bit lost without him around. She is an amazing dog though - went looking for her and found he all covered up on the chair. The sheepskins were already there, but she somehow covered herself up!
