My Westley is 5 years old and I've had the pleasure of loving him for 4 years. He's my first animal I've had to make this choice for and I feel like his chronic illness has me jaded in quality of life. One year into being together he slowly lost control of his back legs. We tried cage rest, multiple steroids, antibiotics, chiropractors, blood work, x-rays and scans and no findings. The vet reported they had nothing left to offer and referred me to a specialty clinic for neurology 2 hours away. They said they would most likely do an MRI and maybe an exploratory surgery to determine why he was dragging his back legs. Then if they could fix it, they would need to do surgery. The vet reported at this time he seemed in no pain. We decided not to take out the multi thousand dollar loan and accepted him and however much time he gave us. Since then I've seen other vets who have suggested euthanasia and I have easily disregarded them due to no change in status. He could get around so quickly just scooting and was the biggest love bug you could've imagined. I learned how to express his bladder as he became incontinent and he never wiggled or seemed to be bothered by it.
July of this year he had massive amounts of blood in his urine. UTIs are common in cats, especially since he occasionally would wear diapers, but never had one because we managed it well. It took a few months and several meds to get rid of the aggressive UTI. We found out he had megacolon at this time and started giving 2 meds 2x/day and expressing his bowels. September we started noticing changes and were advised by both our vets that his condition was progressing and to consider euthanasia. However he was still happy and loved watching birds on his stand and snuggling.
This past week he's been crying and hissing often. He has lost a lot of strength in his front legs and often can't sit up to eat when we aren't here. He wobbles when he walks with back support and cries when held and placed on our laps. He started coughing after his one liquid medicine and this past week he occasionally coughs after eating wet food. But he still eats very well, drinks lots, and plays with his toys sometimes (although he's never been big in them). My issue is that he isn't dying. I could pump him with pain pills (he's currently on gabapentin but it seems to maybe only take the edge off) but I don't know if that's fair. I'm struggling because I think he's suffering and seeing him stuck on his side breaks my heart. But I don't know if I believe in euthanasia?
Sorry for the long post, there's no way for me to simplify my thoughts right now. But thank you for reading.
[link] [comments]
from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/k81itj/please_help_me_decide_what_to_do_with_my_cat/
No comments:
Post a Comment