Ahhh… the joys of pet ownership…

Took Kiko in to the Vet yesterday to find out why he hasn’t been eating with the same gusto as normal. If you’ve ever seen Kiko eat, you know that his appetite knows no bounds. So when he started eating slowly… oh and the diarrhea and vomiting were clues too, knew something was wrong.

This was his second trip to the Vet with these symptoms in as many weeks. Vet did some tests and x-rays.

Kiko has something in his stomach… could be a foreign body (meaning he swallowed something) or it could be a mass of tissue (meaning a tumor or growth of some kind. Vet gives me some options, the least intrusive of which is to take Kiko to the Vet Hospital at UIUC for an Ultrasound. Do that, but later find that this is also inconclusive. There is something in Kiko’s belly and we don’t know what it is.

Frustrated and dejected, I take Kiko home. After a discussion with my lovely wife, we know that the next step is to cut Kiko open and have the thing removed. Tough decision, but it has to be done.

After dropping Kiko off at the clinic this morning for his surgery, I get a call from the Vet saying that the results of one of the tests finally came through. There is something abnormal in Kiko’s liver. It may or may not be related to the stomach issue, but it might be prudent to do a biopsy. But, and there is always an extra but lying around isn’t there… if we want the biopsy, the surgery will have to wait one more day. AGGGHH!!!!

One more day of not knowing what’s wrong is causing me to want to choke innocent people. Hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst.

–sam