Another bloodletting!

Another trip to the vet! This is getting old! I'm still coughing and having breathing problems. I know I'm old, but it's not like I have a 3 pack a day problem.
I look pretty insignificant in the big scheme of things in this photo. It's a bad perspective or something because if I wasn't a big deal they wouldn't be shoveling all this money into my medical care.

Here is my owner giving me the full body petting treatment. I know better than to let my guard down though. There's usually not much pleasant that happens to an animal at these vet clinics. I'm just stating the obvious here.

Jennifer is the first medical staff to check on me. She's the one who comes over to take care of me when my owners are gone. They don't have some kid next door check on me; I get a fully trained vet technician to give me my steroids and cancer meds and give me a thorough looking over. She also feeds me naturally.

Unfortunately (for me) the first thing they have to do before they get down to business is weigh you and take your temperature. Weighing in is no big deal but getting your temp taken is down right unpleasant. I think the surveillance photos tell the story better than any string of words I could come up with!

My medical case is pretty complicated. That's why I have all kinds of medical staff looking after me. It's the celebrity treatment that I deserve. The verdict is that I need to have blood tests done and sent down to the specialists at California Veterinary Specialists in Murrietta where they can scope it out.

I HATE having my blood drawn! It's not simple like for humans. They stick a needle right into your jugular vein (yikes!) to suck the blood out of me.
As can be seen here, this required them bringing in some big burly guy to physically subdue me so the lab tech could nail me with the syringe. I made sure it wasn't pleasant for anyone! I was in a bad mood about this!
The blood is for a CBC blood test. It sounds pretty simple but it analyses a lot of things about my blood. I got to have the right amount of red blood cells and it tests that. Seems like it would go without saying that blood cells are red. I mean blood is red itself! Therefore, if there were cells in blood and they weren't red they sure would be once they got all bloody!! Everything is red after it gets bloody! It also tests my hemocrit which has something to do with how packed my blood cells are. When the vet first mentioned my hemocrit I thought she was calling me a hypocrite! That's not me! Hemoglobin, reticulocytes and all kinds of other stuff too. Sure alot of stuff in blood!!

I was feeling a little surly after all this. The penalty for this is apparently locking you up! Oh well - time out is never a punishment for a cat. We excel at laying around doing nothing! I was in and out of there in a half an hour. No biggie!

Looks like they'll send my blood tests down to the specialty clinic to my oncologist, Dr Prioux. We'll see what he has to say!

SICKO! (that would be me)

I've not been feeling very perky lately. I've been shedding more pounds. I weighed in at 11 pounds last summer. Down to 9 around Christmas and now down to 8 1/2 pounds! I was wasting away and getting kind of surly about it (see surveillance photo of me looking surly). My motivation to patrol the backyard is pretty much gone. This is unfortunate since that is one of my major responsibilities around here. There are days I don't even bother to go outside.

It's been getting serious. I know that because my owner (the big one) weighs my cat food every time they pop open a can of Fancy Feast (I may be sick, but FF is still my favorite! Especially the Grilled Tuna in Gravy). They keep track of how much I eat. They don't weigh the hard food though which makes me feel sneaky every time I eat it. I get put on a scale every day too. I feel like I'm in some kind of research study with all the data they're collecting on me. Maybe I'm a case study and going to be talked about in a veterinary medicine journal! That would be cool. If that happens I expect to be a co-author. None of it would happen without ME! I make science happen!

Anyway, to get to the point, I got myself dragged off to California Veterinary Specialists in Murietta. It was road trip time! Not that I was in the mood for a road trip. I had an appointment with Dr Proulx - he's my main doctor. But the first thing that has to happen is a scan of my insides. That makes sense - it's not like I have a fur problem. Technically it's called abdominal ultrasonography. When you call it that, it sounds like it's going to cost alot!

So the guy who scans my insides is Dr Michael Sueda, DVM. He's a Diplomat of some kind from the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine. I guess - it's something like that. He's got one of those fancy titles like Dr Proulx. My owner is really impressed with fancy titles like that! Me too - the fancier the title, the better the care! I think that's pretty obvious. Dr. Sueda is an internist who grew up in Hawaii which is a country I'd like to visit since there are so many fish there. That's probably where Fancy Feast gets their Tunas.

Maggie, the friendliest Vet Tech in these parts, took all these pictures. They knocked me out with something to get all this scanning stuff done so I think I can count on her as a witness. I didn't see that coming. But you can see my insides on the TV. It's not the first time I've been on TV, btw.
The person holding me down is Katie. Before she worked here she was in law enforcement and crowd control and has a military background. Actually I'm just guessing about that because of how good she was at holding me down. One doesn't get those skills by accident.

Turns out that I got all kinds of things wrong with me! The side of my neck was getting puffed out. So I'm getting bigger and weighing less. It's one of those cat conundrums that Dr Prouix is always talking about. That's a fancy way of acknowledging that I'm a complicated puss. The diagnosis? I got an abscess. That's a nice way of saying that I got a lump on me that is oozing some disgusting pus. Yuk. (puss and pus are etymologically unrelated, btw. Just sayin')

I can thank that low-life, trailer trash, white cat with tabby patches for the abscess. We got into it and he sunk his claws into the side of my neck. Since I run a family-friendly blog, I won't be specific about where I sunk my claws! HA! At any rate, if he doesn't have the kind of quality medical care that I get I suspect his low-life, trailer trash ass is dead! Not that I'm bitter about this or anything.

Anyways, they poked a hole in it and let it drain. There I go losing some more weight! Notice that some of these people have blue hands. I suspect they may be from that Avatar documentary about blue people on another planet. That may be a little far-fetched...

They even got a picture of the duo that did the number on my neck. They seem pretty pleased with themselves! They look pretty excited about having their paws around my neck!



So after all the blood tests, getting my abscess drained, getting my insides scanned, a thyroid test, some special blood test that they only do at Texas A&M and getting drugged up (not that I'm complaining about the drugged up part!), they toss me back into my cell. As anyone can see, there are pages and pages of documentation on my case. I think they're getting ready to publish a medical textbook about me. That would be a fascinating read.

I think these photos (taken in the backroom of the gulag) are pretty hardcore evidence that they were injecting me with something! When I'm actually sleeping I don't look that dopey so it had to be some kind of hardcore drug of some kind! Whatever it was, it turned me into a snooze muffin. Admittedly, a pus oozing, pancreatitic, asthma-laden, bite infected snooze muffin that violates one's stereotype of a snooze muffin. Oh well. Even a usually upbeat feline such as myself can recognize that some days are just going to suck bawls.

Dr Prouix had to summarize things to the owner. Dr Sueda had to give a report to him too. All that probably gave my owner brain overload. My owner asked right away if the news was horrible. The Doc said it's not horrible. I'm not an expert in human to human communication but it's not horrible seems very different than no, he's just dandy.

Yeah, today kinda sucked.