Vet

[nekosensei]

In my last post, I mentioned that I had taken cosettemonster to the vet. She did another X-ray and found that she did indeed have a bone chip in her knee. There are three things she can do:

1) give cosettemonster a shot of Adequan every week to see if it makes things better
2) take her to a place in Saint Charles where they can do orthoscopic surgery on her knee
3) have her stay at the vet's and do full blown knee surgery

So far, we're going with the shot of Adequan and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that things will continue to improve. Her gait has gotten better over the past week and I think this will continue to help her. The only problems she's having is when it comes to jumping up on things. She hesitates and it sometimes takes her a couple of attempts.

The shot is also the least invasive. The downside with options 2 and 3 is that they're more invasive and would require that she have physical therapy. Since she's overweight and getting up there in age, the outcome of this is usually not very good. The last time a cat her age and size needed knee surgery, she was at the vet's office for three weeks getting physical therapy. So....if we go with option 1 and it works, the bone chip will eventually disappear, but the downside is that she'll probably have arthritis in her knee. It's also less risky. She already has arthritis in her neck in back so *shrug* I guess we can just add that to the list. Poor kitty!

I also thought I would add that, as of Friday, I've been limiting how much food cosettemonster eats. For one, I've been separating her from arwenmonster when they eat so there are less fights and so that she doesn't eat arwenmonster's food. Instead of leaving the bowl down for her all morning, I've been picking it up after she loses interest and wanders away. Hopefully, that will help bring her weight down gradually. If, God forbid, she needs surgery, that will help her. And if not, it will still help her by taking the extra weight off her bad knee.

Comments

[tx-cronopio.livejournal.com]

oh, poor honey! Yes, avoiding surgery at her age is a good idea. Here's hoping the shots and the diet provide some relief.

*see, Riley? I told you you couldn't mail her all your fish!*