Buddycare

The latest crisis in the health care world: our cat "The Buddy" has been vomiting for several weeks straight. He's still eating, drinking, pooping normally, he just vomits out partially digested feeds 1-2 times per day. The vet initially thought it was a stomach bug and gave him an antibiotic shot (Flagyl, I think). This didn't help. I was wondering if he might even have pain-induced vomiting from a kidney stone. Sweewawa took him back to the vet today. Turns out cats don't usually get kidney stones (get bladder stones instead). Got an xray of The Buddy (a process which I hear hey enjoyed immensely) which is quite cool to see! I've included it below.



Some things to point out that are fun to see --> you can clearly see the spine along the top of the image going to join with his hip / rear legs on the right, and you can see the tail leaving the spine. You can see the thin kitty ribs along the left side of the image and the dark area with the thin white lines is his lungs with vessels. To the right of the lungs in the image is a bright (white) area that is his kitty liver (not kitty litter). The loopy loops in the middle are his intestines, and you can see air (dark color) and stool (mottled whiter color). Apparently (I wouldn't have picked this up from my own Radiology training) this pattern of air / stool in the intestines is consistent with some serious hairball buildup. So he's on some oral treatments (special food & some tuna-flavored laxative) that will help him with this. So $275 later we have a correct diagnosis and an appropriate treatment . . . I hope. One thing, I was glad that the diagnosis arrived at was hairballs -- something completely out of the realm of what I learned in medical school and beyond. So I have an excuse for not arriving at the diagnosis before the vet :)