Jill's Journey

Well.  This is exhausting!  I am so so happy my little baby girl is home, but I refuse to take my eyes off of her.  I got really lucky that I had already had a vacation planned for this week, so I am home with her ALL week 🙂

The first 24 hours, I was terrified she was going to hurt herself.  She’s so delicate and really was not getting the hang of walking at all.  She fell down everytime she tried to stand up and I really have to admit, my heart was breaking and I thought “oh no, mine is going to be the animal that doesn’t figure out how to walk on three legs”.  She seemed completely and utterly terrified unless I had my hand on her, in which case she felt safe.  The very first thing she wanted to do when she got out of her case was go up on the bed (her favorite spot in the apartment) and she definitely could not get up.  My heart was really breaking.  Instead of encouraging her to do anything, I  promptly put her up on the couch on her favorite quilt and just kissed her and rubbed her belly for hours and hours.  I am so happy she has not lost her desire to be snuggled.  Here are two pictures from our first 8 hours home:

At bedtime, I knew I was going to have a problem.  I gave her a few options of some comfy beds to lay on the floor with, but I KNEW she was going to sit by the bed and cry and want to sleep with me.  I toyed with the idea of sleeping on the floor with her, but then I came up with a crafty way to set up the pillows on my bed so she could sleep with me and not fall off.  We slept the night away (well she did, I never really fell into a deep sleep because I was so worried) and she didn’t move a muscle all night.

Day Two at home was much better.  She’s pretty sleepy from the pain medicine.  She is currently on three doses a day of Buprenex.  She was given a fentanyl drip at the hospital, so she was not sent home with a patch which I am VERY happy about.  The Buprenex makes her very sleepy though.  I can tell about 45 minutes to an hour before shes getting her next dose that she seems much more lively and active.  She even gets up to use the litter box and test out her new hop.  She was hopping around much better on day two and we even figured out a way for her to get up on the bed with a clever pillow set up which you can see in the video below.  I’m amazed how much better she is getting around in just one day.  She’s having no litter box problems at all, which I was really worried about.  I am still petrified to take my eyes off of her in case she takes a spill, but for the first time in my life I am thankful that I live in a 500 sq ft apartment!  I can’t imagine doing this if I lived in a house!  I’m still not sure if I should LET her try to do things or not because shes still healing…..any advice?

Day Two also brought about her biopsy results.  I wasn’t really sure what I was hoping for, but it turns out this new nodule is a met from the original giant cell osteosarcoma that was on her toe.  We will now go to the oncologist in about two weeks once she is all healed to discuss chemo options.  It is breaking my heart (a lot of that going on in the last couple of days!) that after putting her through this surgery she now may have to go through chemo.  I have been told chemo is much easier on cats than it is on people and dogs, but I still feel horrible about it.

Jack seems pretty good about this whole thing!  I am trying to give him as much attention as I can – yesterday he went right up to Jill’s new bald spot and sniffed it like “Hey girl, where’d ya leg go??”  It was pretty comical.

Overall, I am so thankful for many things.  I am so happy that Jill is such a snuggly, easy going cat.  I know so many other cats that are skittish that would probably have come home from the hospital and hid for a week after going through this.  All Jill wants to do right now is be held and pet.  My mom keeps telling me she is going to be miserable when I go back to work, so I will have to ease off that a little!

I also wanted to mention, for future tripawd owners this one thing so it doesn’t worry you, because it worried me!  Jill has developed this pouch of fluid above her scar.  It sort of looks like it could be a fat belly and at first I asked the vet if I just never noticed she was fat, but no, it’s fluid build up.  The vet said to just keep an eye on it, if it gets hot I should bring her in.  It could stay around for about a week or so.  I tried to capture it in a picture, this was the best I could do, but it’s actually bigger in person (sorry for the yucky picture, but I definitely thought it would be helpful for future pawrents!):

Well that is it for now, I am going to see what day three at home brings!  Here are some pictures from day 2 when she was more alert and a video of her getting up on the bed (after five different pillow arrangement attempts!)

xoxo,

Erica & Jill