Sam is Ailing

Sam stopped eating sometime last week. It took me a couple of days to notice. He wasn't touching his dry food at all. In a trip to the vet last fall, I was told several of Sam's teeth needed to be taken out. At the time, I wasn't all that keen on the idea. He was 14 years old then. He was in good health. Why put him through all that.

Well it seemed now the time had come to do the work. I took Sam to the vet on Sunday. The vet said asked if Sam would walk up to his food dish and then sort of wince. I said yes. The vet said it was time for the teeth to come out. They took some blood and urine to do tests on and then forward them to the oral surgeon. I was given a pain killer which would help the lessen the pain and allow him to eat more. Let me say the medicine smell was terrible. I can only imagine what it tasted like. I gave Sam some and he tried very hard to get it out of his mouth. He ended up literally foaming at the mouth. But he did seem able to eat more food.

This morning I called the oral surgeon. One of the surgeons actually answered the phone. We set up an appointment for Friday at 9am. They do an initial consultation and then the surgery. All I had to wait for was the results of the blood work.

That came back this afternoon. It was not good news. Essentially, Sam's kidneys are not working correctly. They are not filtering out the bad stuff and then letting Sam pee it out. I had to take Sam back to the vet. They are going to hydrate him and see what happens. Most likely there won't be any surgery. Some of the anesthesia used can put a strain on the kidneys which is the last thing you'd want to do. Also Sam has a heart murmur which adds to the problem. Sam will probably be at the vet for at least two days.

I'm not sure what the next steps are going to be. The vet talked about a lot of potential scenarios. One would be to some how "get around" the teeth issue and not do the surgery. It might also involve doing home hydration a couple of times a week. This is where I would put an IV in him and hydrate him. I was told it is sort of like dialysis. The thing is I'm one person I'm not sure how easy it would be for me to do this. Like I said lot so scenarios and lots to think about.

I'm hoping I can go and visit Sam tomorrow.

Here are a series of pictures of Sam I took using the sport mode on my digital camera. He's doing one of the things he loves the most: sitting in the sun in HIS chair in the room off my bedroom.