I sadly had to say goodbye to my 8 and a half year old little boy a couple of weeks ago and I am now torturing myself thinking that perhaps I was too quick in making the decision to have him put to sleep.
My beautiful shorthaired silver tabby boy Whiskas began being sick last Aug/Sept time and he had never been a sickly cat. I would come home from work to frequently find that he had vomited, was on and off his food, looked very sad and would just sit in the loaf position gazing into space. It was clear to me that something wasn’t quite right so I took him off to the vet. They checked him over and performed extensive blood work and the outcome was pancreatitis.
I brought him home with pain killers and anti sickness drugs and I gave him a bland diet of boiled chicken for a few days. He seemed to pick up but wasn’t really his normal self. About 6 weeks later it all happened again and after another six weeks again and we were back and forth to the vet. This time though he didn’t eat anything at all for 2 days and he ended up staying at the vet on the usual meds but also a drip. Luckily he began eating so thankfully no feeding tube was required. They let him come home but once more he was not quite right in himself, very lethargic, didn’t want to play and would just pop out to do his business and come straight back in.
I would spend hours and hours researching pancreatitis and how I could help him. I also spoke with various dieticians to find foods that would control the pancreatitis but nothing seemed to help. I began to see a pattern at this point, he would be ravenous for a day or so then completely the other way. It seemed that after he had eaten, the food wasn’t able to go down properly and there was some kind of difficulty digesting it making him very uncomfortable. He was beginning to look a little thin with increased vomiting and I felt It was time to go back to the vet. I also began to have suspicions now that there was an underlying problem here. I had him scanned and X-rayed and it turned out that as well as the pancreatitis he had diffuse thickening of the whole intestinal tract which could have been severe inflammatory bowel disease or a diffuse lymphoma. Also a prominent rugae in his stomach in the outflow area was seen which could have been a possible mass. The only way of knowing and diagnosing for sure would have been to have surgical biopsies. He had been poorly for 7 months and looked so weak and I felt I couldn’t put him through anymore suffering. It was obvious that he had lots of bad things going on inside and so I said no to the biopsies. Steroids could have been trialed but he was so poorly it was difficult to say whether they would have helped or not with all that was going on. I thought at the time it was best to let him go.
I keep telling myself that surely if the vet thought that there was an easy solution or any hope then she wouldn’t have agreed to have him put to sleep. Should I have agreed to biopsies? Should I have tried steroids? What have I done? I feel guilty that I may have ended his life before it should have ended and now there is just a big hole in my life and he could have still been here.
My beautiful shorthaired silver tabby boy Whiskas began being sick last Aug/Sept time and he had never been a sickly cat. I would come home from work to frequently find that he had vomited, was on and off his food, looked very sad and would just sit in the loaf position gazing into space. It was clear to me that something wasn’t quite right so I took him off to the vet. They checked him over and performed extensive blood work and the outcome was pancreatitis.
I brought him home with pain killers and anti sickness drugs and I gave him a bland diet of boiled chicken for a few days. He seemed to pick up but wasn’t really his normal self. About 6 weeks later it all happened again and after another six weeks again and we were back and forth to the vet. This time though he didn’t eat anything at all for 2 days and he ended up staying at the vet on the usual meds but also a drip. Luckily he began eating so thankfully no feeding tube was required. They let him come home but once more he was not quite right in himself, very lethargic, didn’t want to play and would just pop out to do his business and come straight back in.
I would spend hours and hours researching pancreatitis and how I could help him. I also spoke with various dieticians to find foods that would control the pancreatitis but nothing seemed to help. I began to see a pattern at this point, he would be ravenous for a day or so then completely the other way. It seemed that after he had eaten, the food wasn’t able to go down properly and there was some kind of difficulty digesting it making him very uncomfortable. He was beginning to look a little thin with increased vomiting and I felt It was time to go back to the vet. I also began to have suspicions now that there was an underlying problem here. I had him scanned and X-rayed and it turned out that as well as the pancreatitis he had diffuse thickening of the whole intestinal tract which could have been severe inflammatory bowel disease or a diffuse lymphoma. Also a prominent rugae in his stomach in the outflow area was seen which could have been a possible mass. The only way of knowing and diagnosing for sure would have been to have surgical biopsies. He had been poorly for 7 months and looked so weak and I felt I couldn’t put him through anymore suffering. It was obvious that he had lots of bad things going on inside and so I said no to the biopsies. Steroids could have been trialed but he was so poorly it was difficult to say whether they would have helped or not with all that was going on. I thought at the time it was best to let him go.
I keep telling myself that surely if the vet thought that there was an easy solution or any hope then she wouldn’t have agreed to have him put to sleep. Should I have agreed to biopsies? Should I have tried steroids? What have I done? I feel guilty that I may have ended his life before it should have ended and now there is just a big hole in my life and he could have still been here.
