So this morning Mrs. ACW was staying home because she wasn’t feeling well and I realized that giving Sherlock his medicine was completely up to me. Considering that we normally have to wrap him in a blanket until he’s completely immobile, I wasn’t relishing the task.
I prepared his medicine in the plastic syringe (sans needle) we were given. It’s just like a tukery baster with graduated milliliters on the side. And let me tell you, this thing makes it easy to give him his medicine… when he stays still long enough.
I picked him up and he was fine with everything until he saw me reaching for the syringe. He squirmed and wriggled out of my arms and bolted. I was able to eventually wrap him up in the throw rug we keep by the back door (you have to get creative when you need to immobilize a stubborn cat) and give him his medicine. And like usual, once he had swallowed his medicine I went to go get him a treat. I put the treat on the floor, he ate it, and then he vomited a pink, foamy mess all over the floor. Considering the medicine is pink, I was pretty sure what the problem was.
“You little bastard”, I thought to myself, “you finally figured out a way to get around taking your medicine.” While I was contemplating whether I should give him another dose since he spewed almost all of the first dose, he vomited again. Again it was a horrible pink foam, and it was way more medicine than I had given him that morning. Worried, and running late for work, I rushed Sherlock to our vet, who is luckily, right down the street from our house.
While I was explaining to the vet what had happened, Sherlock started making this horrible growling and gagging sound. Like he was hacking up a hairball or something. And then right in front of the vet he does the foamy pink vomit thing again. The vet grabbed him, took him to the back, and left me sitting there with the cat carrier and a counter-top full of pink cat vomit. A few minutes later an assistant came in and cleaned up the vomit, so I asked her how Sherlock was doing.
“Well, he never stopped vomiting after Dr. [Veterinarian] took him back there, so they want to start prepping him for surgery.”
I just about collapsed. I had no idea what was going on and they were asking me to allow Sherlock to be prepped for surgery. So I called Mrs. ACW and woke her up to let her know what was going on, and while I was going though the whole story with her, the vet came back in to give me an update.
“We’ve got Sherlock sedated, but we need your permission to prep him for surgery and to operate.”
“Operate on what!? I don’t even know what’s going on here!” Meanwhile Mrs. ACW is now crying on the other end of the phone.
“We checked Sherlock’s chart after we took him in the back to control his vomiting and found an error in the dosage of antibiotic he was given. It’s got way more antibiotic powder than it’s supposed to have. Somehow he was given the dosage for large canine rather than a feline. We need to perform an endoscopy soon to see if the antibiotic has eroded his stomach lining. If it has, we’ll need to operate to try and minimize any internal ruptures.”
“Yes! Go! Whatever!”
I was in such shock that it took me a few minutes to get pissed about how negligent it was of them to give Sherlock the wrong dosage of medicine. I wanted to punch the doctor in his fucking face. I don’t even know how much this is even going to cost. Does anybody know a good lawyer that practices animal law?
UPDATE: We just picked up Sherlock from the vet, and he seems a little woozy, but okay. He apparently had his stomach “scraped” and was put on an IV to dilute the effect of whatever antibiotics were still in his system. Apparently he can’t eat anything over the next few days, and we’re only supposed to let him drink water, but they said he might just sleep for the next few days. They did say that he’d probably never be able to eat regular cat food again. We’re going to have to buy this prescription cat food and then grind it up into a paste so his stomach can handle it.
I’m just kidding. He’s totally fine, and as big a douchebag as ever. There was no vomiting. April Fool’s suckers.
