the Perreault Family

After a week long visit to the vets office (two of them actually) Dolce is home.  To make a long story short (or as short as possible and still have it make sense) we took Dolce in to our vets office a week ago last Monday because he wasn’t eating, drinking or acting himself.  They ran a few tests, let me take him home and told me that they would call me with the results.  I got a call the next day to bring him back in because they thought he had an issue with his liver.  They wanted to start him on some IV fluids and see if they could fix the problem.  As it turns out it wasn’t that simple… After ultrasounds and further testing they realized that he had a stones in his gallbladder and an obstruction in his common bile duct (most basically meaning he couldn’t get rid of waste and therefore had stopped taking anything in).  The stones and the obstruction meant that he needed to have surgery and that we needed to take him to another animal hospital where they could better help him.  He did have surgery last Friday.  They took out the majority of the stones that they could, rerouted his bile duct directly to his small intestine and closed him up after putting in a feeding tube.  It was touch and go over the weekend regarding his recovery- he had two blood transfusions after the surgery because of his low levels but he is now back on track (or at least on his way there).  I picked him up from the surgeons office yesterday where I received a bag full of his medications, the special food that he is on and instructions on how to feed him through his feeding tube.

Dolce is still on the mend and not completely back to himself (who can blame him after major surgery) but at least now he is home.  We will need to continue feeding him through the feeding tube until he starts eating on his own and giving him his medications but he is home and on his way to a full recovery which is the important part.  The whole family (furry children included) were really excited to see him when we arrived home; I am pretty sure Piper would have jumped on to the bed to join him if we would have let her…

Wish me luck with all of the medical stuff (it is not my forte AT ALL) and luck managing all three animals plus Jay on my own for the rest of the week- Jamie is at his yearly staff conference for the week (yup- it’s horrible timing).  Needless to say, it will be an interesting week- especially since one of the instructions that I was given was to not let Dolce jump.  Seriously- no jumping??  He’s a cat people…

Here’s a couple photos of him settling back in last night…

He has a "sweater" on to cover the feeding tube a bit and hold it close to his body- that's what the blue thing is.

Piper greeting Dolce after his return home.