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Heard back from Matthew. Hobkin’s ultrasound procedure is over, he’s awake and alert, and I can breathe again.

The good news is that the spot they saw in his lungs is gone now and his kidneys seem fine. The bad news is that he has dilated cardiomyopathy, which is a disease where the heart is enlarged and the walls of it have subsequently thinned.

Hobkin’s long-term life expectancy isn’t good. The disease is fatal. However, he may still have some quality time left with us. The vet couldn’t give us a precise estimate; he said anywhere from days to months.

He’s already on the meds he needs to be on—pimobendan, furosemide, and enalapril—and will be on for the rest of his life. My preliminary research has come up with a couple additional treatments (i.e., taurine and L-carnitine supplements) which I’ll want to bring up with the vet as well.

Finally having a proper diagnosis eases some of the helpless frustration I’ve felt this last week, but knowing that Hobkin is indeed dying makes me anguished and tearful. I am grateful that it seems likely we’ll have some time left with him, just not as much as I wish we had.

Hobkin had another good night with no breathing problems and no need for oxygen as well as a good appetite.

Napping nestled in bed.

So today he goes in for an ultrasound and needle biopsy. They’ll be putting him under for much longer than they did to draw his blood the other day, which has me quite anxious. We’ve asked them to ultrasound his kidneys as well. I’ve been doing a lot of research, and I think it’s very likely that Hobkin has, and has had for a while, chronic kidney disease–which I believe is the likely ’cause of his pneumonia. I’d really like to have that confirmed as well as get an indicator of what stage he’s at. But of course that would also mean he’d have to be under for longer. The vet said they’d see how he was doing and if he was doing well enough, they’d include the kidneys.

More waiting. Trying to remember to breathe.

Had the first full night of sleep in a week last night. Matthew took Hobkin back to the vet’s who administered another Lasix injection yesterday. By the time I got home, Hobkin was downright frisky. And hungry. Devoured cottage cheese, veggies, blueberries, and several med-stuffed crickets.

Which brings us to the next development. The blood work was inconclusive. His white blood count is fine, his tooth appeared non-problematic, and he’s never manifested a fever through this, so it’s looking less likely that it’s an infection–which I guess is probably for the best right now ’cause the antibiotic is the only med we can’t seem to get him to take. However, his kidneys are showing some distress, which could be due to his sickness as much as the cause of it.

That places us back into the brainstorming and conjecture realm. The vet speculated that it could be his heart. He’s due to go in for an ultrasound and needle biopsy of the spot they saw on his lung in his x-rays tomorrow, but only if we can get him strong enough for the procedure since it involves a much longer period of having to be under anesthesia, not to mention a needle in his chest.

So we’re upping his furosemide dose and adding pimobendan and enalapril for his heart, metronidazole to treat his kidney, and lactulose for ammonia in his digestive tract (to ward off an apparently common side effect). He’s also been switched to cephalex as his antibiotic, but so far we can’t get that into him. Otherwise, the pills, including the metronidazole which we have been cautioned tastes as bad as anything is possible to taste, have gone down easily, either crushed and mixed in whipped cream or stuffed into a cricket. I’m a little concerned about over-medicating him, but we’re running out of options.

So it’s all about the waiting and seeing now. But Hobkin looked the best he’s looked since this started last night and hasn’t needed oxygen at all since he got back from the vet’s. And his breathing was regular this morning. He wasn’t as hungry, but he did eat some cottage cheese, blueberries, and bugs (the breakfast of champions) before I had to head to work.

Waiting is.

Hobkin’s breathing has continued to get worse again. He’s wheezing and each breath is labored, and his appetite has fallen back to accepting only crickets and mealworms. We’ve put him back on continuous oxygen therapy. I gave him an early dose of furosemide (Lasix) last night, and I plan to administer subcutaneous fluids before I have to leave for work.

We’re going through cycles of aggressively treating the fluid in his lungs with intensive meds at the vet’s until he starts recovering, bringing him home to recuperate, seeming to be on the mend, and the fluid building up again. We need to find and treat the cause of the fluid build-up in order for him to get better, and we need to do that before his strength gives out.

Discovered that Hobkin still has all his teeth. Since the vet was only going to pull the one tooth if it was an easy and quick extraction, I have to assume it was neither. He didn’t actually give Matthew a post-procedure rundown so I don’t even know if Hobkin’s tooth was all that bad. Apparently the vet office had a staff meeting right afterward, so the vet wasn’t available for consultation. I find that quite frustrating.

Hobkin has a follow-up appointment on Thursday. I assume the vet plans to tell us what he thought of the tooth then, but Hobkin’s not going to make it that long without another Lasix injection, preferably later this morning. The unspoken assumption was that the results from his blood work would be discussed then, too, but I’m hoping they’ll be available before then. Also, the new antibiotic they prescribed for Hobkin tastes vile and Hobkin won’t take it, even if it’s doused in whipped cream. Need to find out if the pill form is any better and small enough to conceal in a cricket (that actually works with the furosemide tablets–and I’m so glad about that I don’t even care about the eww factor). If not, I’m hoping they’ll allow us to administer it as an injection at home. But they won’t give us the furosemide in injection form for home use. FDA regulations. I’m also concerned about having to give Hobkin so much furosemide. It can cause an electrolyte imbalance, especially with Hobkin not eating properly, and they’ve also got him on prednisolone. And corticosteroids can cause an additive potassium-depletion effect in combination with furosemide. And while I can help offset that with subcutaneous fluids, the fluids that I’m injecting may just end up building up in Hobkin’s lungs.

I haven’t been able to sleep at all tonight. Worry and fear and stress don’t make for peaceful slumber. Hobkin is curled up in my lap right now. He’s so beautiful. His coat is thick and lush and soft beyond belief. When I hold him in my arms, it’s like cuddling the warmest, softest stuffed animal in the world, but even better, ’cause the stuffed animal cuddles and loves me back. I’ve been watching him and listening to his breathing get more labored and the occasional wheezes in his chest become louder and more frequent. I look at him, my beautiful Hobkin, and I can’t understand how he can be sick. And I listen to the small, distressed sounds he makes with every breath, and it breaks my heart.

Matthew phoned. He’s at the vet’s with Hobkin. The vet says that one of his lungs is clear and the other is very good. And that he only needs oxygen therapy for support rather than round-the-clock. He’s been downright feisty there, which is a great sign.

But now they want to anesthetize him so they can draw some blood to run tests on. They also want to see if they can pull a tooth while he’s out. This is the tooth that we were planning on having them look at next month, before all this happened.

My first impulse was to have them wait a couple days for him to get stronger, but the vet is concerned that we don’t know what’s causing his pneumonia and he might not get better and could get worse in a couple days unless we can treat the cause–especially since his last UTI was resistant to Amoxycillin (which he’s on now). And that the tooth might be the root of it all.

We decided to go ahead and have them draw his blood, and if his tooth is loose enough for the vet to pull out “with his fingers” to go ahead and do it. But putting Hobkin under is so risky. I am, once again, terrified.

O gods and spirits who watch over little animals, please, please let us have made the right call on this.

[Edit: Matthew just called. Don’t know if they pulled Hobkin’s tooth or not, but he is now waking up from the anesthesia, and Matthew knew I’d want to know immediately. I’m so relieved, I’m shaking.]

Another quiet night. Hobkin’s breathing still remains clear, but it’s a little harder than it was at its best yesterday. So brought his oxygen up to 1.5 lit/min. He’s also sneezing/coughing less, and–OMG frabjous day–his appetite is returning. Got him to eat egg and yogurt, peanuts, blueberries and watermelon, and some veggies–although he still needs a jump start with crickets and mealworms. Hey, anything that works. Have also started adding Pedialyte to his meals. Was encouraged enough by his appetite that I decided not to give him another shot of subcutaneous fluids this AM.

Need to go back to work today. Hope fosteronfilm can manage without me. And please, please let Hobkin keep getting better.

Had a quiet night. The best kind of night in the world. Set an alarm to wake me every two hours so I could offer Hobkin some food and see how his appetite was. Normally didn’t need to wait for the alarm to go off, as Hobkin would wake up and try to get down off me to use the litter pan at around the 1hr 45min mark, which woke me up anyway. Feel a great empathy and appreciation for parents of newborn infants. Don’t know how they can survive this sort of sleep schedule for months.

Hobkin’s appetite is still way down, which is worrisome but totally understandable. However, I’ve been able to coax him to munch a few mealworms or crickets or peanuts throughout the night, and he’s readily taking his meds infused in whipped cream. I also just administered 150ml of subcutaneous fluids to him, so he should be hydrated.

The so-good-I’m-trying-not-to-overreact news is that I think his breathing is back to normal. Possibly a little harder than usual, but so much better than Friday night/Saturday morning that it’s nearly unbelievable. He has started having sneezing/coughing fits—little bursts of 5-7 sneezes/coughs in a row—which I don’t know how to feel about. Is he just clearing the last fluid from his lungs? Or is it indicative of a problem? As long as he’s breathing well and seems comfortable, not going to fret about it and will bring it up with the vet tomorrow. Also been gradually dialing down the oxygen throughout the night from 4 liters/minute to 1 liter/minute.

What I am really worried about is that he suddenly started displaying severe hind leg weakness last night to the point where he can barely walk a couple steps without flopping or wobbling over. He’s a senior skunk and this has been very hard on him, and he already suffers from arthritis, but this looks like what some of our ferrets experienced when they had cancer. Not a lot I can do about it right now since our total focus must be on getting him over his pneumonia, but it’s worrisome.

Thank you so much for all your supportive comments. I can’t express how much they’ve meant to us.

Hobkin is back home again. Wasn’t sure if he was going to pull through this morning. When our vet listened to his breathing and lungs and heard how bad the wheezing was and how much fluid had built up, he actually suggested we consider euthanasia.

I had a total meltdown. I simply couldn’t accept that Hobkin was ready to go yet, but I was afraid, too, that my judgment was off. Maybe I was just being selfish and incapable of letting go when Hobkin wanted to call it quits.

The vet went to give Hobkin another Lasix injection as well as a couple other meds and some subcutaneous fluids, and Hobkin tried to bite him. Then I knew that Hobkin wasn’t ready to give up (this is the vet–Hobkin has two vets at the clinic we take him to–that he doesn’t get along with). If he was finished and ready to let go, he wouldn’t have cared who was doing what to him. Of course, I rushed to pick him up then, and immediately he quit snarling, clung to me, and let them do whatever they wanted to him without a peep.

Went into frantic brainstorming mode after that. Asked the vet to rig a face mask to administer oxygen so I could hold him. They keep trying to keep us out of the room when he’s in the oxygen box, but I know that he’ll be less stressed if he’s with me. I held him all morning and into the afternoon until the vet’s office closed, and between the drugs, the subcutaneous fluids, and being able to be with me, his breathing improved to the point of all the wheezing vanishing.

But we couldn’t take him home if he wouldn’t eat. I remembered when we were dealing with cancer in our ferrets that they would accept Nutrical when they wouldn’t stomach anything else. So I asked the vet if we could try that. It was a sticky mess, and it took some coaxing, but Hobkin devoured a large dollop of it. Huge knot of worry melted away right there.

Knowing there was still a good chance we’d end up having to take him back to the emergency vet this weekend, fosteronfilm and I decided to take him home. I also asked the vet to show me how to administer subcutaneous fluids. Did it with the ferrets, and it’s so much better if I can do it at home instead of having to make a trip to the vet’s.

Hobkin has been cuddled with me in his little oxygen face mask at home instead of being in the oxygen box, and I think that’s really made him happier and more comfortable. I sent Matthew to the pet store to pick up some crickets and mealworms. Hobkin actually pounced at those. Eww, but OMG-thank-all-the-good-spirits-that-watch-over-sick-critters. And I just got him to eat a little yogurt with healthy powder and half a hard-boiled egg.

Hobkin in his oxygen face mask–which is more like a dome or helmet than a mask. It doesn’t need a tight seal since we’re only trying to increase the percentage of oxygen he’s breathing, not administer 100%.

This has been an utterly grueling emotional roller coaster, and we’re definitely nowhere near out of the woods. As we saw yesterday, Hobkin could backslide without warning. We’re taking it hour by hour. But he’s still fighting, and we’re still hoping.

At the emergency vet clinic. Had a very bad night. Spent most of the last couple hours in tears.

After yesterday’s promising developments, Hobkin stopped eating and his breathing got really bad–loud wheezing and very labored–at around midnight. Rushed him here after several hours of trying to coax him to eat something (must stay hydrated) and watching him go steadily downhill.

Waiting until our regular vet opens. Hoping he can just stabilize a little and hang on. Really, really terrified.