More Waiting
Artemis is at the vet again today for more tests in her ongoing saga. About a year ago, we noticed that she was breathing hard pretty much all of the time. Last June, the vet took some x-rays and saw what looked like a mass in her chest cavity. After some steroids, he concluded that he was confused – it could be cancer, and if so, she wouldn’t be around very long, it could be her anatomy (she has a divit in her chest, so there could be stuff going on that they don’t know about). The advice we got was to either take her to the expensive clinic for lots of tests (lots of stress on her), probably for a diagnosis of cancer or to wait for the cardiologist who periodically visits our clinic to have a look at her x-rays.
We decided to wait. Of course, we didn’t know that it was going to be 6 months before the cardiologist visited. He came to our clinic two weeks ago, and looked at her x-rays. He didn’t see cancer (plus, if was as bad as the original vet had thought, she should have been in bad shape by now). Instead, he thinks it might be a diaphragmatic hernia – the stuff that the original vet said looked like a mass might be intestine coming into her chest cavity. He left us feeling very good about her chances of living a long life, if we find that it is a diaphragmatic hernia and get it repaired (major surgery, but he reassured us that the mortality rate is generally very good).
When our normal vet returned to the office (she was away at a conference last week), she had an associate call us to arrange a barium swallow for Artemis – this should show them if, indeed, she has intestine in her chest cavity. However, the vet that Andrew talked to also cautioned that if the liver is coming through to the chest cavity that there could be other complications to correcting the problem.
So, now she’s at the vet today for her barium swallow. I’m telecommuting, as usual for Mondays, and the house feels so empty. The boys are here, but they haven’t moved from where there were when I woke up this morning – Artemis usually follows me around a bit, and demands attention while I’m at the computer. I miss her. Send her some good mojo today.
< Side Note > We had to take away the kids’ food for the night, since Artemis wasn’t supposed to eat after midnight for her test today. Ares was so hungry this morning, he was seeking out toy mice in the house to eat off their tails. What a silly guy.