and things went downhill from there

I took Merry in to see the Vet yesterday because she was clearly not well.

She has been losing weight lately anyway, but she was miserably sick over the weekend, and off her food for the next couple of days. Also, even when I finally got her to start eating again, she was very listless and restless as if she could not get comfortable. Clingy too. She would come in and yell at me every few minutes for attention. I suspected that her thyroid problem had come back, but my bigger fear was that her kidneys had failed.

It turns out I was right and wrong.



Her thyroid issue had returned, and since we already had one taken out (and the other appears to have migrated from her neck), she will need medication for the rest of her life to keep that in check. The bigger issue was her pancreas, though. Based on the tests, she either had pancreatitis, or pancreatic cancer. One is treatable, and the other is fatal.

The vet said that an ultrasound would give a better idea of which one it was, but they don't have an ultrasound machine. He assured us that even then, it made it more of a 60/40 thing than 50/50 based on the blood work. The other option was to treat her for pancreatitis, and if it started to clear up, then that would rule out cancer.

We left her at the clinic last night and they started her on a drip.

The vet called about an hour ago to let us know that she was responding well to treatment. He said, "She's much more alert and active today, and she's even starting to cop an attitude, so she's obviously getting better."

I'm going to swing by this afternoon with her favourite blanket, and with luck we'll be able to bring her home tomorrow.