Emergency Prayer Needed For Emma... UPDATE

[critters]

Hubby and I were talking, and we both strongly agree that IF the ONLY problem with Emma's condition is not being able to urinate or defecate on her own, there is absolutely NO reason why we can't manually express her. I even told him, HJ look, if your parents don't or can't take on that responsibility, *I* will take her, I will teach your mother, I will adopt her, and if down the road I find I can't, I will find someone or some place that will. We both agreed that she needs to go to another vet for a second opinion (and HE said this, not me, though I agree also!!!), and there is absolutely no reason for her to be euthanized *IF* the only problem is her not being able to urinate or defecate.

Now, again, there may be other problems going on with her that I'm not aware about. Obviously her spine is broken; easy fix - amputate the tail. They are/were already planning on doing that anyway, but wanted to wait to see if she goes on her own first.



Also, she has a very nasty infection on her rear end... her anus and vulva are green and purulent and very enflamed. They do have cream that they put on it daily but I'm not sure why that may be an issue or what the cause of that is.
...
and her vet telling her something different probably isn't helping the situation any, either.

YAY!!! I really suspect she'll be OK in the end, or at least mostly so. If she's expressed regularly, she may not need diapers; what ain't in can't leak out! LOL I only diapered Buddy at night sometimes; occasionally he got into a thing where he slept so soundly he'd drown the place.

The butt infection is NOT typical; I wonder if those injuries came from the same incident that damaged her tail? If she's not on abx already (to prevent UTI), ideally they should pick one that covers both.

As for vets, like everybody else, not all vets are created equal. The BEST vet we've ever had was here during Buddy's first 6 months here, and she is also an RN. Vet med tends to lag behind human med, especially in relation to disabilities, so it was unheard of, at that time, to use gabapentin for nerve and spinal pain in critters. She immediately saw the validity of what I was suggesting and got right on a dose for it, whereas most vets would've given me a hard time. Now, 2 years later, it's rare but not unheard of, and Buddy helped spread the word. It broke my heart when I found out she'd gone to a practice 50+ miles away.

[TenHouseCats]

i was so happy to see this post--i am sorry that you felt that i was attacking you before, but i was really expressing my frustration, more, i think, with vets who do not, or will not, take the time to admit that they don't have all the answers.

who expects them to? there is no way any one vet can be on top of everyone that is going on in every species--that's understandable. what is NOT acceptable is those vets who will not listen, or actively look for solutions--there are specialists out there, doc, call one of them!

i love my vets, but i expect them to treat me with the respect that i, as the caretaker of my cats, deserve. i can trust them to listen to me, to tell me when they don't have the answer or haven't heard of new research or new treatment protocols yet, and to go look things up or track down the experts when that is what's indicated.

there are too many vets in this country who still consider cats nuisance animals, tho i wouldn't have believed that ten years ago. there are WAY too many who haven't opened a book since they graduated, and in the cases of catastrophic injury, or viruses like FIV and FeLV, find it much simpler to chose the easy way out--immediate euthanasia--rather than taking the time to discover that that is no one's professional recommendation any longer. it's so hard to watch someone whose beloved companion has just been sent to the bridge unnecessarily, because someone used their "credentials" to excuse their own laziness--as the guardians, we have to say, "wait a minute--i KNOW that other people have done this, i want to try."

thank you SO much for hearing what we were really saying: give emma a chance, she's been terribly injured, but who knows--love alone can work miracles. if she sees, in your eyes, that she's just fine as she is, no matter what, that's gonna help her fight to stay. i'm sure you're scared about what it gonna mean, but you are NOT alone, and this little one needs you.

MC