Done With Block 3b!!!; Found Out My Angel Is Dying

Above: Me with a beautiful male Eclectus parrot at the house of a woman who sold me a bunch of iris and daffodil bulbs (another Craigslist find:)
Below: Beautiful apple tree on a crisp, clear day.





Above: More typical upstate New York scenery.
Below: View of Ithaca coming down route 79.




Above: Houses around Ithaca.
Below: Road near my house on a grey fall day.



Above: Ithaca scenery on a grey day.
Below: I've realized that even on the greyest of grey days, if you look hard enough you can almost always find a small patch of blue sky at some point during the day. I hold onto those glimpses of blue with my whole heart.




Above: Tumultuous sunset, with the sun peaking out beneath the grey.
Below: Barn next to my house on a sunny day.
Below: Cats cuddling on my bed, so sweet. I guess Simon makes a good head rest!


I found out last night that this is probably Lindy's last weekend of life. I had noticed that over the last week she had been intermittently dyspneic but the signs were so subtle that I wasn't sure that I wasn't imagining it or that it wasn't stress because it mostly happened when I was giving her fluids. And I'd look over at her again a few minutes later and she'd look totally eupneic.
Then Tuesday night when I was giving her fluids I noticed marked abdominal effort with her breathing. I knew this was bad but I chose to go to bed instead of taking her into the ER because I wanted to get some sleep and take my final. In the morning she looked fine to me again, and she also looked good in the afternoon. But I was supposed to go to North Carolina tomorrow morning and so I decided to run her into the hospital and get a weight and a quick once over from her wonderful resident doctor.
When I got there, her doctor palpated both a very cranial bladder and a caudal bladder. Obviously she does not suddenly have two bladders! She had had a small pseudocyst on her bladder last year and so she suspected hydronephritis.
We took her to the ICU for a quick ultrasound. Sure enough, she had a huge pseudocyst surrounding her right kidney.
We decided to scan her chest while we had the ultrasound out and she had a large amount of pleural effusion. We ended up tapping her chest and getting 340 ml off the left side!
I felt so guilty for not taking her in earlier. She must have been having trouble breathing for at least a week. How awful.
I always feel doubtful of owners who come in and say they just noticed their cat having trouble breathing last night when there is significant disease. But from now on I will be much less judgmental-- cats really can hide disease incredibly well.
We suspect that Lindy has heart failure and so I have not given her any fluids since yesterday. I expect to euthanize her on Saturday morning because she will dehydrate rather rapidly without fluids (she was getting 250-300 ml subq a day, but if that sounds like a lot she is a BIG cat).
Since I'm not certain that she has heart failure and I want closure before I euthanize, I am going to take her for an echo Friday with one of the cardiology residents. If she by some miracle doesn't have heart failure and does have lymphoma, I would treat her. But I'm not holding out much hope.
I'm going to spend most of the day lying in bed reading with her and sitting in the sun outside if she wants to go out.
So now that I know death is so close, Lindy can do whatever she wants. Which means standing on my computer whenever I sit down at my desk. This is one of her favorite things to do, and it usually drives me crazy because I am trying to type or study. I think she does it as a way of getting attention.
She can also finally eat tasty food instead of k/d. I'm about to run out and get her some Fancy Feast and tuna. I will add water to the food to make a slurry, but know that amount of extra fluid will barely make a dent in her massive losses.