Long time, no post...

I post to this about as much as I use my gym membership, and I've been thinking I should just cancel the latter. The insanity at the clinic has abated for a moment (I had a cancellation), so I suppose now is as good time as any to get in my quota.

So what to talk about? Well, here's an image from yesterday morning. What you are looking at is large intestine on the left, with small intestine emerging towards the right. No, that's not normal - it's called intussusception. The gut has telescoped in on itself right at the division of the small and large intestine (the "ileocolic junction"). Those can be particularly nasty if one doesn't get to it in time. The last time we had one of those, it was a surgery I worked in during a lunch break a few months back, and the tissue was dead, so I quickly cancelled a few appointments and set to removing that section of bowel. The cat from yesterday had a much better outcome (don't worry - both cats are alive and well - one just has a shorter GI tract). With some patience and gentle massage, we were able to undo the intussusception. We found that the bowel was thick at several different points, so we collected biopsy samples and are awaiting the results. I suspect that once we get our answer as to underlying disease, we'll be able to treat the problem and prevent this from recurring. With the age of the cat, I am most suspicious that inflammatory bowel disease is at play, and those cases usually do quite well with medical management. I certainly wasn't expecting that we would have to operate on the cat, but when we realized what was happening, we knew we had to go to surgery or we would likely lose the patient.