He arrived as they all do; in a small cat carrier. He was hidden from view in a dark enclosed plastic box. Designed to be light weight, these carriers are like a little treasure chest to a veterinarian. You really never know what you are going to find inside. Sometimes the smell gives you a big hint, but I’ll get to that later.
Every vet has learned to peek inside the box before you open the door or even dare to stick your hand in. There are sometimes ferocious little lions hidden beneath a puff of orange fluff.
This is Kiki's story. Kiki is a part of the over 700 cats living in the Animal Rescue Farm just along the Pa-Md border, in a little town called New Freedom, Pa. They are the most devoted bunch of amazing, inspiring, compassionate people I have ever met.
To begin, Kiki is a boy. I know it’s confusing. I can’t really explain why, but that’s a lot of cats they have to manage so some of those cats get some pretty funky, or down right mis-appropriated, names. We have learned to just accept them and go with it. But he is whom he is, Kiki. He sat in his little plastic cat carrier box, hidden quietly in the back. I opened the door. He didn’t lift his head, he didn’t move, he didn’t care about me, or where he was, nor did his internal survival drive tell him to even care about pretty much anything anymore. I could see and hear his rattle and crackle of the all to common ailment of rescue cats “chronic upper respiratory disesase”. How many of these rescues cats do I see? A LOT! You put too many of anything together, and you know what you get? A lot of flu. Send your kids back to school and then grab the tissues, because you’ll need them soon. He had yellow-green snot just caking his nose. Some of it had dried leaving a crust but more was coming down the chute, like a slow flow of yellow-green lava. He could barely breathe, and when you can barely breathe you barely move. I lifted his lifeless thin black body out of the carrier. He didn’t fight, or protest, or struggle even a little. I weighed him. 5 pounds, (that’s at least 2 pounds less then he should have weighed). When you only weigh 5 pounds, those 2 pounds really count. That’s 40% of your weight, OMG almost half! We quickly made up a treatment a very basic treatment plan for him. The good ole basic stand-by treatment plan, fluids, food, and antibiotics. Feed him any damned thing he wanted, try to make it as smelly as possible. When you have a whole nasal cavity full of snot it takes a smelly-smelly morsel to convince you to open your mouth and eat.
We also started him on the antibiotic I call “the big guns”. “The big guns” are the expensive guns. Funny how life always works that way? I was going to hit him hard and keep him on them for at least a month. I was going to make sure that the previous attempts that the rescue had made were either not the strong enough meds, or they weren’t used long enough. I was covering my bases and stacking the deck. We put him in a cage with my treatment plan in place and I moved onto the next little plastic chest of mysterious disease. I didn’t really need 12 years of college for this guy, I thought to myself and I moved onto the next carrier in line.
Over the next few weeks we cleaned more slung snot from the walls, the doors, and the ceiling than anyone could imagine a 5 pound creature could produce. He sneezed, spit, and re-painted our walls. In case any of you are ever thinking of working at a vets office, and need to start at the bottom, (aka kennel), be prepared to not only pick up poop, scoop litter, but oh, yes, scrape snot off of walls is also in the job description. After 4 weeks of “the big guns” he still looked puny and miserable. So I called the rescue director and confessed that my hopes had fallen far short for poor Kiki. I asked if I could put him under general anesthesia, look in the mouth, flush the nose, take head x-rays, pretty much make any stab in the dark that was listed in the text book under ”chronic upper respiratory disease” from my old vet school days. I heard the pause in her voice, (that little jab of falling short of expectations, I get used to it, sigh), and a reluctant “ok”.
The next day, I said hello to Kiki, said a little quiet prayer, crossed my fingers and put him under general anesthesia. His head x-rays showed the damage to the very fine bony turbinates, years of snot eating your nasal passages, but no tumor, score 1 for Kiki. We flushed his nasal passages, until the snot ran a clear saline, and I thought “aahh, now maybe you will be able to breathe, well, at least for a little while”. And then we looked behind his soft palate. This is the area where the hard bony roof of your mouth transitions to the soft part then heads down into your larynx. And there it was an enormous irregular cluster of grape like tissue the size of your thumb. I was never so happy to see such a hideous structure. The veterinary treatment for a big wad of tissue growing in the back of your throat? grab, yank, and pull. And, oh yeah, hope it doesn’t grow back. It was the center stage curiosity of every staff member in the building. We were all happy to see the culprit.
Kiki woke up without any complications and since then he has put on 4 pounds and become the most extraverted, playful, and rambunctious kitty you have ever seen. He decides when you are done playing, when it is time to start playing, and he will slap you if you walk away without his permission. He has become one of our resident cats. And he reminds me everyday why I do what I do.
Here are a few video's of our JVC cats having their polyps removed;
Here is more information
on Nasopharyngeal
Polyps.
If you would like more information on this topic; Nasopharyngeal polyps, then please follow the link below:
www.petmd.com/dog/conditions/respiratory/c_dg_nasal_polyps
Every vet has learned to peek inside the box before you open the door or even dare to stick your hand in. There are sometimes ferocious little lions hidden beneath a puff of orange fluff.
To begin, Kiki is a boy. I know it’s confusing. I can’t really explain why, but that’s a lot of cats they have to manage so some of those cats get some pretty funky, or down right mis-appropriated, names. We have learned to just accept them and go with it. But he is whom he is, Kiki. He sat in his little plastic cat carrier box, hidden quietly in the back. I opened the door. He didn’t lift his head, he didn’t move, he didn’t care about me, or where he was, nor did his internal survival drive tell him to even care about pretty much anything anymore. I could see and hear his rattle and crackle of the all to common ailment of rescue cats “chronic upper respiratory disesase”. How many of these rescues cats do I see? A LOT! You put too many of anything together, and you know what you get? A lot of flu. Send your kids back to school and then grab the tissues, because you’ll need them soon. He had yellow-green snot just caking his nose. Some of it had dried leaving a crust but more was coming down the chute, like a slow flow of yellow-green lava. He could barely breathe, and when you can barely breathe you barely move. I lifted his lifeless thin black body out of the carrier. He didn’t fight, or protest, or struggle even a little. I weighed him. 5 pounds, (that’s at least 2 pounds less then he should have weighed). When you only weigh 5 pounds, those 2 pounds really count. That’s 40% of your weight, OMG almost half! We quickly made up a treatment a very basic treatment plan for him. The good ole basic stand-by treatment plan, fluids, food, and antibiotics. Feed him any damned thing he wanted, try to make it as smelly as possible. When you have a whole nasal cavity full of snot it takes a smelly-smelly morsel to convince you to open your mouth and eat.
We also started him on the antibiotic I call “the big guns”. “The big guns” are the expensive guns. Funny how life always works that way? I was going to hit him hard and keep him on them for at least a month. I was going to make sure that the previous attempts that the rescue had made were either not the strong enough meds, or they weren’t used long enough. I was covering my bases and stacking the deck. We put him in a cage with my treatment plan in place and I moved onto the next little plastic chest of mysterious disease. I didn’t really need 12 years of college for this guy, I thought to myself and I moved onto the next carrier in line.
Over the next few weeks we cleaned more slung snot from the walls, the doors, and the ceiling than anyone could imagine a 5 pound creature could produce. He sneezed, spit, and re-painted our walls. In case any of you are ever thinking of working at a vets office, and need to start at the bottom, (aka kennel), be prepared to not only pick up poop, scoop litter, but oh, yes, scrape snot off of walls is also in the job description. After 4 weeks of “the big guns” he still looked puny and miserable. So I called the rescue director and confessed that my hopes had fallen far short for poor Kiki. I asked if I could put him under general anesthesia, look in the mouth, flush the nose, take head x-rays, pretty much make any stab in the dark that was listed in the text book under ”chronic upper respiratory disease” from my old vet school days. I heard the pause in her voice, (that little jab of falling short of expectations, I get used to it, sigh), and a reluctant “ok”.
The next day, I said hello to Kiki, said a little quiet prayer, crossed my fingers and put him under general anesthesia. His head x-rays showed the damage to the very fine bony turbinates, years of snot eating your nasal passages, but no tumor, score 1 for Kiki. We flushed his nasal passages, until the snot ran a clear saline, and I thought “aahh, now maybe you will be able to breathe, well, at least for a little while”. And then we looked behind his soft palate. This is the area where the hard bony roof of your mouth transitions to the soft part then heads down into your larynx. And there it was an enormous irregular cluster of grape like tissue the size of your thumb. I was never so happy to see such a hideous structure. The veterinary treatment for a big wad of tissue growing in the back of your throat? grab, yank, and pull. And, oh yeah, hope it doesn’t grow back. It was the center stage curiosity of every staff member in the building. We were all happy to see the culprit.
Kiki woke up without any complications and since then he has put on 4 pounds and become the most extraverted, playful, and rambunctious kitty you have ever seen. He decides when you are done playing, when it is time to start playing, and he will slap you if you walk away without his permission. He has become one of our resident cats. And he reminds me everyday why I do what I do.
Here are a few video's of our JVC cats having their polyps removed;
Kiki is one of the many reminders of
why we work so hard on even the most difficult and chronic cases. Kiki was
adopted by one of the vets of the clinic and has a family who sees him as the
perfect soul he always was.
If you have a pet with this
condition and would like to learn more about it (or any other pet related
condition) please ask the amazing people at Pawbly.com. It is free for everyone to use.
If you would like to learn more
about us at Jarrettsville Vet Center please find us here at our website, or like our Facebook page.
www.petmd.com/dog/conditions/respiratory/c_dg_nasal_polyps
working as a receptionist at JVC gives me a front row seat for many of these stories .
ReplyDeleteI get the latest poop first hand so to speak !
Forgive the pun, vet humor...LOL!!
I look forward to reading more tales about tails, more about the caring,sharing and little miracles that make up our days at JVC !!!
m.e. :)
I love the pictures that accompany the stories. They are all so special and unique. I am glad they had the chance to enjoy and live their lives. So lucky to have found Dr. Magnifico and JVC!!!
ReplyDelete