this led to my my beautiful, sweet 12-year-old kitten to have surgery to remove the cyst, which, over the course of two weeks, had been drained and refilled with a clear, low-cellular fluid.\u00a0 the hope was, once the cyst around her kidney (i think of it like those balloons you get at Disneyland which has the coloured Mickey balloon inside a clear balloon<\/a>) was removed, any fluid produced would be absorbed by the tissues in her abdomen without the direct, crushing risk to the kidney itself.<\/p>\n surgery happened.\u00a0 my poor girl had a 5-inch long incision and had to wear a compression onesie and get pain meds twice a day for two weeks.\u00a0 at a six-week checkup, everything looked great.\u00a0 she was slim and trim and feeling good.\u00a0 that was early November.<\/p>\n about two weeks ago now, i noticed that she was looking a little round around the middle.\u00a0 at first, i figured it was from all the extra eating she’d been doing (her appetite had been on fire post-op – yay!).\u00a0 again, i chalked that up to her just feeling better overall without this water balloon growing in her body. last week, though, i was giving her cuddles and kind of palpated her belly and it was very firm and very round and she seemed uncomfortable when i gave it a little extra poke or prod, so i called the vet to get her checked out.<\/p>\n unfortunately, our regular vet (who is the owner of the clinic) is off on a six-week trip of a lifetime and isn’t due back until next week.\u00a0 after everything i went through with Amy Pond’s<\/a> health issues last year, i didn’t want to wait the two or possibly three weeks to get her seen, so i just got her in as soon as i could.<\/p>\n a very unhappy cat in a box, an x-ray and quick ultrasound later, it was confirmed that her abdomen is filling with fluids.\u00a0 well, fuck.<\/p>\n they took a little fluid out and sent it off for analysis.\u00a0 again, it’s that low-cellular fluid which indicates it’s being produced by the remaining cysts in her kidney.<\/p>\n oh, her bloodwork also shows she’s hyperthryoid. and, she has a heart murmur.<\/p>\n of emotional note, from the day i took Amy to the vet for her similarly fluid-filled abdomen (but, from cancer, not kidney), it was less than a month to when she died after an aggressive abnominocentesis at the vet’s office.\u00a0 it’s fair to say this news\/diagnosis has started a bit of a countdown in my head about Rose’s longevity.<\/p>\n honestly, i wish they’d removed the funky kidney when they already had her on the operating table.\u00a0 with the heart murmur and her age any surgery is risky – two big ones in a few months probably isn’t all that great for her.\u00a0 the other option is to do regular fluid taps (at $800 each), but Rose is severely<\/em> stressed out by car rides\u00a0& vet visits, which, again, can’t be good for her heart and general well-being.<\/p>\n all currently available options are either too traumatic or too expensive.<\/p>\n our regular vet returns next week and we’re already booked into see her on tuesday. we’ll discuss options with her directly and then try to figure out a way through this.<\/p>\n in the meantime, other than getting more pot-bellied everyday, she seems to be in good enough spirits when Penguin isn’t harassing her.\u00a0 she’s still loving me and letting me love her back, which is all i can hope for.<\/p>\n i’m just so fucking scared of having to make a heartbreaking decision so soon after Amy and mom and everything else this fucking year has tried to crush me with.<\/p>\n i love you, rosecat.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" i didn’t want to muddy the waters in my last post, but there’s more life trauma to relate to you. as briefly mentioned a previous post, my cat, Rose Tyler, “almost died“.\u00a0 i admit, i took liberties with hyperbole and she wasn’t exactly on death’s door, but she did have a fluid-filled cyst surrounding her …<\/span> Read More →<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fubsy.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fubsy.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fubsy.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fubsy.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fubsy.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3173"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/fubsy.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3175,"href":"http:\/\/fubsy.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3173\/revisions\/3175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fubsy.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fubsy.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fubsy.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/fubsy.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/vintage-rose_5625634023_o-332x500.jpg\")