Am crossing fingers left right and centre for my lovely boy who has a 50/50 chance at the moment
He began asking to go out lots in the early hours of Thursday morning and so in the end I got up completely at about 4am to find spots of blood but wasn't sure exactly where it was coming from and during the morning I worked out he may have a urinary infection - so I booked an appt with my vet for later that day and then went out to catch a wee sample - what I got was a cup full of blood - so took it round to my vets who saw me straight away.
Because he's about 10 my vet thought the worst or it could just be a bad urinary infection as all he could find was he was dehydrated. So he was just going to start him off on antibiotics. I questioned this as I was worried that if there was also something underlying time may not be on his side and he said well we may just find nothing can be done - my answer was I want to try at least.
The upshot is he got an appt the following morning at Bristol vet school where he is now and am glad I did (my own vet is good but my gut feeling was that if it was my vet's worst fears then weren't we just delaying the obvious).
He has developed an immune-mediated condition (he had no platelets), which was one of my vet's 1st thoughts, but which is unusual to present at the age he is so the concern is still the underlying problem as to why and they discovered he now has a heart problem (not brought on by/linked to the immune problem) so they have to be careful now re treatment.
The concern is the treatment may kill him but not doing anything will also kill him.
He's holding his own at the moment, eating and drinking and being very vocal, which is good but he's not out of the woods yet as he's on vincristine and high-dose steroids and could go downhill very quickly - the worry is he could bleed out or his heart may not take the high-dose steroids. Cancer has been mentioned more than once and his bladder has a lump there but its soft so they're hoping its just a blood clot. He now also has bruising on his abdomen.
At least at the vet school he is well looked after (very closely) 24 hours a day and the vincristine should get him home quicker if nothing else happens.
I dread each phone call
He's still such an active happy boy who hasn't really slowed down despite the fact he's now 10 going on for 11 and not ready to go
