BayWing

Laura Whitehead, our vet student, called this AM and left a message. She said Ritka seemed to feel better and was no longer dripping diarrhea. Her eyes were open and she was much more alert. She still did not want to eat, but had not vomited again since I left.

I was a bit frustrated today as I worked at my desk. I tried to call Renae Zumstein (the weekday student), but her pager was not working correctly and I did not get through. Eventually I talked to Dr. Guillaumin. They have been very busy in emergency today. The lab work included some good news. Her platelets are up to 88,000 and her white blood count was back up closer to normal. She is still anemic. Her creatinine was down to 2.1 and her liver enzymes are getting better. They did an official ultrasound this morning that showed her intestinal blood flow and pancreas looks ok, but showed gastroenteritis and low motility. She looked more alert and wanted to go out.

We went to see Ritka this evening about 6:30 pm. She came down the hall with energy and tail wagging happy to see us. She had her eyes open and they looked more normal. She was fairly energetic walking down the hall to the room. But once inside, she lay down and curled up on Wesley’s foot. We offered her some food, but she did not want any. She did leak a bit of diarrhea, which I cleaned up and washed her bottom. Then I curled up and held her while she slept. She slept with twitching feet. I hope she was not coursing more jack rabbits in her dreams – I’ve told her repeatedly this week that she is NOT a whippet – she is not even a lurcher. They let us have about an hour with her tonight. She squatted in the hall and peed on they way back to her cage bed. They don’t take her out often enough so I guess it is better than in her bed. She moved much better tonight than last night.

The best news tonight was that before we got there, Renae was able to get Ritka to eat a few bites of of rice and cottage cheese. Do you suppose she ate when she heard about the plans for the nasogastric feeding tube? I wish we could spend more time with her, but I’m so glad she is feeling better. The nutritionist was not happy about all the types of food we offered – but the vet thought getting her to eat anything would be good.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 22nd, 2006 at 12:46 pm by Wesley R. Elsberry and is filed under Dogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.