Paging Dr Google

[smokingboot]

So there we were on a friday night, too exhausted to move; me, my boyfriend, some wine and a balloon cat. larians went to bed butI couldn't sleep.I sat up and stroked her for a while, listening to the faint crackle of air bubbles under her skin. Then, I did a bit of research on the net.

Got nowhere putting in 'swollen cat,' 'or cat with bloat.' But the moment I put in 'Cat with air trapped under skin,' I got plenty of leads. She ticks off every box on the 'Subcutaneous Emphysema' list, even down to the period of time between trauma wound and manifestation of the swelling. Between 3 and 7 days... she started to swell on the 3rd day after her dental surgery. What can happen is that the anaesthetic tube can pierce the windpipe, allowing air to start filling space under the skin. It usually sorts itself out over a period of days, though some badly affected cats may need air siphoned out of them repeatedly. Not that the vet had told me anything like this. Her advice was that it 'could have been anything.' She was talking about potential tumours, about checking for obstructions, about the cats eyes being slightly yellow possibly indicating kidney failure... and the necessity for an x-ray to check. Oh,and of course, anaesthetic again: £300 in all. With everything that has happened, from the extraction of two molars to this next proposed expenditure,we will be lucky to get change out of a grand.

The vet had strapped her up in bandages. Today she pierced the skin to create the equivalent of blow holes for the air to escape through. She could have done that yesterday, but why, when she could wring more money out of us for another appointment? When we spoke today, we talked about Dr Google and she admitted that emphysema was likely, a fascinating development as on first examination of the cat she said she had seen nothing like it. Today she said it was 'Extremely rare.' In all her 10 years of practice she had never seen anything like it.  Well, it's not that rare. She has just dined out on it. She's a locum,and off back to Australia after today.Good riddance too; the most deadly money vampire I ever met, and no friend to my poor cat.

So I have stayed home with Surya,and not gone to the family event down South, and I feel very sorry for myself. But despite some of my favourite people being there, and despite this sense of behaving rudely, I wouldn't have enjoyed it for worrying about poor puss. So today I will do nothing, tomorrow I don't know and on Monday I will be talking to the vet about getting Surya well, then after tht, refunds.

And then, time to find a new vet.

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[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

She has gone to empty pockets in The Great Southern Land, in havoc creation second only to cane toads.