Thankfully, they seem to be settling back down, for now, at least.
Up first: Elliott. She did end up having a CT scan. They gave contrast. Great. We should have some good information to go on here! Too bad that her renal portal system and not her general circulation decided to pick up said contrast. This led to all of the contrast sitting OVER the area of interest, but not actually highlighting it for us. Side notes included more free coelomic fluid than was expected and evidence of hepatic lipidosis (fatty liver), despite her normal lab work.
As the next step, we decided to try and sample the fluid and submit it for analysis and a culture. We attempted to collect it at work, but between not really knowing what we’re doing when working with exotics and there just not being all that much fluid, we failed to collect the sample. I brought Elliott back to her vet to get it the following week. Continuing the theme of non-answers, the fluid analysis came back just a transudate, which is not specific for any one thing, and the culture did not grow any bacteria.
I had decided that if we could confirm the mass was arising from her reproductive tract, I would have her spayed/remove it. If it was GI, I was not going to take her to surgery for an exploratory and attempt at resection. My feeling is that she’s happy and has a good quality of life, as long as I keep hand-feeding her. It’s a little annoying, but doable. Why risk something going wrong and shortening the good time that she has? We also have no idea how long this mass has been there in the first place. I assume it has to do with why she isn’t eating on her own, but I can’t 100% say that.
The most recent step we’ve taken is a course of antibiotics and NSAIDs. She’s still taking both and had a follow-up scan this past Thursday to see if anything looked different. I didn’t expect much. We can still see the mass. There is still fluid, which in small amounts is normal for Bearded Dragons. The fluid is now mostly in her cranial abdomen, probably because she’s FULL of eggs. That was the overwhelming thing to see on this week’s scan. I sent the images to her vet and have to see what she says this upcoming week. I also ordered some calcium for her, now that I know about the egg situation. This is why she was supposed to be a he…
In the middle of all of the Elliott diagnostic drama, Ferne decided that she only wanted to eat about half to two-thirds of her daily amount of food. The first day or two, I chalked it up to a change in her schedule over the weekend of the Superbowl, since we were gone for a good chunk of that Sunday, and she ate and got her meds at off times. When the lack of appetite continued, I examined her, looking for the kind of things I would expect from her based on her history- new ulcers, resorptive lesions. She vomited two piles of dry food that Thursday. I palpated her abdomen pretty much daily. I eventually had a colleague look at her and repeated her lab work, even though I had just done it 3 weeks prior. Nothing exciting.
The only other signs I had were that she was leaving smaller urine balls in her litterbox, but I felt the total volume was probably normal for her, and she was throwing litter EVERYWHERE. I mean all over the place. I felt like there was as much litter on my floor as in her box when she would leave it. It wasn’t making sense. Maybe her belly hurt while palpating her abdomen, but maybe she just wanted me to stop harassing her by then. When I first brought her home, she would often have a small prolapse of rectal tissue that would come and go. It started happening again, and then it was present every time I looked at her for several days.
I had my colleague ultrasound her. She noted that Ferne’s intestines were mildly but diffusely thickened. The top rule out is infiltrative bowel disease, although without a biopsy, we can’t say it isn’t lymphoma. As one of my former tech’s said, she’s used to being the problem child, and the lizard was getting too much attention. This cat absolutely did not need a new problem. I did not need her to have a new problem.
I changed her food and started supplementing B12 for her. I added psyllium to her food at the suggestion of a colleague to try and reduce her straining. (Her other signs made perfect sense in hindsight: she just felt like she needed to have a bowel movement all the time. Instead of producing stool, she would strain and end up urinating a small volume. She would just kick the litter around because she was frustrated and didn’t know what else to do.) I really wanted to avoid steroids because I don’t want to accept that she may need them long-term for anything, and because she’s Ferne and a true lemon, I also don’t want her little body to get any ideas about diabetes being fun. She hated the psyllium and was still feeling miserable at the end of last week, so I caved and started the prednisolone. She’s better now, and I started tapering her back off of it the other day.
I’ve accepted by now that I am not going to have an answer for Elliott. Her situation is what it is. She will have whatever time she has. As long as her life is good, hand-feeding continues. When she won’t eat that way either or she can’t pass stools (since we think the mass is more likely GI in origin), then we make different decisions. Hopefully Ferne stays eating and having completely normal stools without any straining for a long time now that we’ve gotten that gut of hers quieted down.
Fingers crossed that Rookie, Magic and Felix stay healthy and out of trouble for the foreseeable future. Late January through early March has been enough fun with two of the five pets back and forth for assorted exams and tests. I need a break. I’ll still have plenty of sick client pets to try and figure out; I don’t need to be working on my own at the same time for a while.
“I’m calling in sick today; I came down with puppy fever.” ~ Unknown
