Hi all,
Now I'm finally home I can post an update on Chalky myself!
She's so different to when I last saw her. I guess I can see it more because I've been away from her. When we took her to Great Western Referrals last Saturday, she could barely stand, kept falling, rolling, couldn't clean herself even and her eyes were constantly flickering. Her head was also very noticeably tilted.
Now, her head is still slightly tilted- if it was a clock face, I'd say 11.30? I think I said 1, 2 o'clock last time but I must have been working on some kind of backwards clock, because the tilt has always been to her right. At times it actually seems completely upright. It does get worse at times, like when she has to have her meds, she gets stressed being wrapped up in the towel, and it seems to tilt 'back an hour' or so, but recovers quite quickly after any stress. Forgive me using the clock references but it's the easiest way to describe the severity of the tilt? She hops, runs really well, not particularly fast, but she is definitely enjoying being able to move around, though she doesn't seem to overdo it- just a little run, a little explore, then a rest, and so on. I haven't seen her fall or stumble once since I came home yesterday evening and she is even getting in and out of the litter tray with no trouble at all. Steve turned their 3-level cage into a pen so she doesn't have to negotiate any jumps, but there is a cardboard box about 7inches tall in the living room for them to play with and hide under, and she has jumped on top of this several times with ease, that I've seen.
She's still ont he same medication, due for review with the vet tomorrow I believe (it feels so weird having all of this taken care of by Steve as I'm usually the one to administer meds, etc). The meds issue is... a headache. It is so frustrating to have a vet tell you one thing and yet everything else you read tell you another. One thing I am glad of though, is that we took Chalk out of the other vets, and transferred her there. A lot of the vets that we regularly see, are very good, caring and had it been any of them on duty that weekend, we perhaps might not have wanted to do it. But the vet that was on duty, I couldn't put my finger on it until after we left, but he just didn't seem to care. Not only about what we were saying, and showing him, but about Chalk. Her condition had clearly deteriorated from even the night before when we'd seen her, but he just shrugged and said that she looked ok. I honestly believe that if we hadn't taken her out of there, she would have deteriorated further, if not, worse *shudders*.
As for me, well they discovered through MRI that I didn't have any more gallstones hiding, nor a bile leak which was feared, but *just* pancreatitis. I couldn't eat for about a week, aside from trying cereal with milk which made me incredibly ill. I've been discharged with not much info other than avoid all fats completely, but nobody's told me how long for. Currently I can only eat plain steamed or boiled veg, plain salad, or plain rice/pasta. Not even fat-free milk- a glass of that the other day started me off. I've lost over 6kg since I went in! I wanted to lose weight but not like this. I ate a piece of steamed fish for dinner last night but it had a tiny fat content and I was incredibly ill for hours and nearly ended up back in the emergency dept. Hopefully it will all clear up soon...
Thanks for all the support for Chalk and myself
