Burgess Family Infirmary

This weekend wasn't what we were expecting.

We had plans to go down to Seattle for the three day weekend. Visit Michael, see the Space Needle, visit the site of the World's Fair. All the Seattle things. 

But things were working against the Burgess clan.

I've been having constant stomach pains since Sunday night. They got worse at night, when I moved around or lied down. They got better when I ate. Sometimes the pain radiated through to my back. I finally gave in to go see a doctor on Thursday. He told me I have mild pancreatitis.

He then told us I should eat really gentle things for a few days to give my pancreas a break and let it heal itself. You know, steamed vegetables, bananas, mashed potatoes, rice. All of the things that I don't eat. Great. 

I did some internet medical research on my own and figured out that an all-liquids weekend was probably the best thing I could do for it. The doctor also gave me some pills that are essentially Prevacid to help calm down my stomach. 

After we got home from the doctor and propped me up with a heating pad, tomato soup, and tons of pillows, we noticed Loki was keeping his right eye closed. Because we weren't already up to our elbows in ailments. 

We called a vet to make sure there wasn't anything more seriously wrong with him. Initially we got the all clear, with instructions to bring him in if it didn't clear up. 

Friday night, of course, it hadn't cleared up. 

We'd already decided to stay in town for the weekend. My pain was getting worse, and walking around Seattle all weekend really wasn't in the cards. 

Loki had a trip back to the vet. He asked us a series of questions and we were initially hopeful as our answers were all "no." He hadn't been sneezing, or coughing, or itching at the eye, eating less or not drinking, there was not watery or gunky discharge. Evidently these were not the right answers and only made the vet more concerned. 

He gave Loki some drops to "freeze" the eye (still not sure what that was, but he said it would help with the pain he was having). Then he dropped in some dye that would stay in any scratches. Then he had to flush the eye with water.

Now, even with humans, flushing an eye with water is not an easy or pleasant experience. With cats, even worse. Loki hated every minute of this. The vet had a very large syringe without a needle so that he could repeatedly squirt the water at poor Loki's eye. 

The final step was to turn off all of the lights and use a florescent flashlight to look for any dye remaining in Loki's eye. To our horror, a spot the size of a pea shone bright green on his cornea. This is a corneal ulcer, one of the largest the vet had seen. Holy moly. 

He said the pain would be very harsh and it was odd that there had been no discharge. It would have started with a small scratch while he and Amelia were playing, or while Loki was grooming, or with a small foreign body, such as dust. The most important thing now was making sure that any treatment avenue we chose worked as fast as possible.

The vet brought in a gel-like eye drop antibiotic, dropping one drop into his eye and making sure it spread across the whole eye. This would need to be done every 2 hours for 24 hours, then every 4 hours for another 24 hours, then every 6 hours for 4 days. However, if there was no difference in the first 12 hours, we would need to switch to a stronger dose of two different antibiotics. 

Welcome to the long holiday weekend.