Berni

Annie update: my sweet gentle soul is gone. I took her for the endoscopy on Tuesday thinking we may finally get to the bottom of her diarrhea problem. Two hours after I dropped her off at the vet, my phone rang. “There’s been a complication.” They had just started the procedure and hadn’t reached the area to get tissue samples when the probe punctured her bowel. The tissue was thin and more deteriorated than expected. Prognosis for repair was very poor. Only one other option. I requested they take the samples they hadn’t gotten to so I could know what caused the issue. They opened her and found multiple other tears and deterioration along the organs which might have ruptured and gone septic at some point. I brought her home so that Andy could see and sniff her before I took her for cremation. On Monday night she made multiple trips to the litter box which had become normal behavior for her and on the last trip she left a large puddle of very foul smelling diarrhea on the bathroom floor, it unmistakably smelled of blood. I can only imagine that her bowel must have been so badly damaged for this to have gone so wrong. Today would have been her second gotcha day.

Annie update: her urine culture came back positive for E. Coli, not an extreme amount but enough to need an antibiotic. The main finding on the GI panel was an extremely low B-12 level. I’ll need to give her B-12 injections for about a month. I’m also keeping her on probiotics. After tossing almost a whole (expensive) box of Purina ProPlan FortiFlora due to expiration a few months ago I decided to try it.one more time. To my shock and awe she’s actually eating her food with it added, unlike last time when she practically starved herself rather than eat it. I swear her current meals are more powder than food at this point – prebiotic, probiotic, dental powder😅! If none of that puts the brakes on the diarrhea then I’ll have to consider the endoscopy. I’m still trying to wrap my head around how her labs didn’t detect the low B-12 level before, and that it could be what’s causing the chronic diarrhea, but I guess that’s better than dealing with the “C” word. The vet also said that there’s always the possibility of the benign liver nodule developing into something more at some point but for now it’s not a major problem. So I’m just waiting to get the prescriptions to start the “getting a pill into Annie” rodeo.