Thank you and an explanation/update
Jun. 23rd, 2011 07:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimeThank you everyone for the good wishes sent! My older bullie, Nublu, seems to be on the mend now and sends sincere tail-wags and bodily contortions of gratefulness to you all! So do I (only with perhaps less of the contortions-ness).
Nublu is approaching nine years old, and about two years ago he began having digestive issues. Partly they were quite clearly related to decreased intestinal absorption (large intestine, it seemed), and responded satisfactorily to a change in diet. Partly, though, he had symptoms of gastric irritation which I could not find a reason for (x-rays with and without contrast showed nothing out of the ordinary, except minor spondylosis etc etc). To make matters more worrying, coinciding with the gastric signs (which came and went in bouts) was a skin tumor, that was initially cytologically diagnosed as a mast cell (those are not good, though common and may due to their release of histamin give also gastric symptoms). I took the tumor off with as wide margins as I could, and pathology said it was actually a histiocytoma - a much better diagnosis, as it's benign and not likely to give metastases. But as the occasional bouts of gastric irritation (gas, nausea, pain after meals, reflux) still appeared, I was getting paranoid that maybe the histology was incorrectly interpreted and maybe I was dealing with a metastasis from a mast cell tumor. This spring, after for a quite long ok period, gastric symptoms returned, so I scheduled a gastroscopy with a friend working in the Uni clinic and some more workup. Before we could get to that, though, Nublu's condition took an abrupt turn to the worse and last Wednesday night he showed rather clear symptoms of intestinal blockage. So I called friends and said, we need to do an exploratory laparatomy - cut him open -, being half prepared to find something that could necessitate putting him down. Happily for everyone concerned, we discovered that Nublu had just been keeping up the reputation of his breed as the models for chronic gastric foreign body - he had two peach pits that he had carried about for a considerable time (maybe for the whole 1 -2 years) in his stomach, and for some reason, one of them had decided just now to move into small intestine, hence the blockage sings. Let me tell you, I'm much happier seeing a foreign body instead of a pyloric tumor or a mast cell metastasis in the spleen, for example:) We did see that his kidneys had changes in shape and size, which is not good, but, otoh, he's no spring chicken and so far has no kidney failure -- he might develop it, or he might live his life with still enough glomerules left to function:). Now a week has passed from the surgery, and he's been steadily getting better - trying to roll in shit while walking, having good appetite and taking his usual share of the bed. My younger bullie, Nosu, who was very careful with him during the first, bad days, has been initiating play these last two days, so it seems she also senses he's on the mend.
So, again, thank you everyone for your support - and also, happy (belated) Solstice/Midsummer/ head Jaanipäeva!
Nublu is approaching nine years old, and about two years ago he began having digestive issues. Partly they were quite clearly related to decreased intestinal absorption (large intestine, it seemed), and responded satisfactorily to a change in diet. Partly, though, he had symptoms of gastric irritation which I could not find a reason for (x-rays with and without contrast showed nothing out of the ordinary, except minor spondylosis etc etc). To make matters more worrying, coinciding with the gastric signs (which came and went in bouts) was a skin tumor, that was initially cytologically diagnosed as a mast cell (those are not good, though common and may due to their release of histamin give also gastric symptoms). I took the tumor off with as wide margins as I could, and pathology said it was actually a histiocytoma - a much better diagnosis, as it's benign and not likely to give metastases. But as the occasional bouts of gastric irritation (gas, nausea, pain after meals, reflux) still appeared, I was getting paranoid that maybe the histology was incorrectly interpreted and maybe I was dealing with a metastasis from a mast cell tumor. This spring, after for a quite long ok period, gastric symptoms returned, so I scheduled a gastroscopy with a friend working in the Uni clinic and some more workup. Before we could get to that, though, Nublu's condition took an abrupt turn to the worse and last Wednesday night he showed rather clear symptoms of intestinal blockage. So I called friends and said, we need to do an exploratory laparatomy - cut him open -, being half prepared to find something that could necessitate putting him down. Happily for everyone concerned, we discovered that Nublu had just been keeping up the reputation of his breed as the models for chronic gastric foreign body - he had two peach pits that he had carried about for a considerable time (maybe for the whole 1 -2 years) in his stomach, and for some reason, one of them had decided just now to move into small intestine, hence the blockage sings. Let me tell you, I'm much happier seeing a foreign body instead of a pyloric tumor or a mast cell metastasis in the spleen, for example:) We did see that his kidneys had changes in shape and size, which is not good, but, otoh, he's no spring chicken and so far has no kidney failure -- he might develop it, or he might live his life with still enough glomerules left to function:). Now a week has passed from the surgery, and he's been steadily getting better - trying to roll in shit while walking, having good appetite and taking his usual share of the bed. My younger bullie, Nosu, who was very careful with him during the first, bad days, has been initiating play these last two days, so it seems she also senses he's on the mend.
So, again, thank you everyone for your support - and also, happy (belated) Solstice/Midsummer/ head Jaanipäeva!
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-23 05:54 pm (UTC)