He had bladder stones that he couldn't pass. And when he tried, they got stuck in his urethra, and he became blocked. A week ago, he presented to the emergency clinic for this problem. It was the first time it had happened to him. His owners weren't properly educated on what this meant in terms of lifestyle changes, diet changes, and survival time. Bladder stones are managable, they can be influenced by diet and water intake. They can be removed with surgery. They can be an incidental finding that will never affect the health of the animal.
But E.J. had problems from his. And each time the stones reentered his urethra, he had to be anesthetized again. He blocked 4 times in the last week. Yesterday, we did a cystotomy. That's the surgery where we go into the bladder through the abdomen and scoop out all the stones. It was like picking grains of sand out of a beach blanket. The stones were tiny, most of them. Many he could likely pass on his own. But two were larger, round stones that were small enough to enter his urethra from the bladder, and large enough to not be able to pass all the way through. We took out 30+ stones. Carefully flushing and flushing and flushing until we were convinced that the larger stones were all gone, and anything too small for us to remove would probably be able to be passed on his own.
We closed the abdomen. We took a radiograph that showed a nice bubble of air in his bladder, but no remaining stones big enough to be spotted. We placed an indwelling urinary catheter, because his urethra has been traumatized so many times in the last week that we wanted to relax it while the inflammation died down. Amy went to make some phone calls. The technicians were placing a new IV catheter, because his current one (though working well throughout surgery) had been in for 4 days and was at increased risk for infection.
They walked away for 10 seconds. Both new catheters were in, he was still on the table on anesthesia. The pulse-ox slipped off his tongue and the alarm went off. Gail went to replace it, and noticed he was very pale. Then she noticed he wasn't breathing. We located doctors, three of them.
We did CPR for almost 10 minutes. We used epi, atropine. We ventilated him at 40 times per minute, we pumped his heart as fast as we could (you try making a heart beat 150 times/minute). We watched the ekg each time we paused. He didn't make it.
A week ago, before first going to the emergency clinic because he couldn't pee, he was a healthy cat. Whatever stones may have been present were not affecting his life at all. Yesterday, he died. The owners elected a group cremation, with no ashes returned.
But E.J. had problems from his. And each time the stones reentered his urethra, he had to be anesthetized again. He blocked 4 times in the last week. Yesterday, we did a cystotomy. That's the surgery where we go into the bladder through the abdomen and scoop out all the stones. It was like picking grains of sand out of a beach blanket. The stones were tiny, most of them. Many he could likely pass on his own. But two were larger, round stones that were small enough to enter his urethra from the bladder, and large enough to not be able to pass all the way through. We took out 30+ stones. Carefully flushing and flushing and flushing until we were convinced that the larger stones were all gone, and anything too small for us to remove would probably be able to be passed on his own.
We closed the abdomen. We took a radiograph that showed a nice bubble of air in his bladder, but no remaining stones big enough to be spotted. We placed an indwelling urinary catheter, because his urethra has been traumatized so many times in the last week that we wanted to relax it while the inflammation died down. Amy went to make some phone calls. The technicians were placing a new IV catheter, because his current one (though working well throughout surgery) had been in for 4 days and was at increased risk for infection.
They walked away for 10 seconds. Both new catheters were in, he was still on the table on anesthesia. The pulse-ox slipped off his tongue and the alarm went off. Gail went to replace it, and noticed he was very pale. Then she noticed he wasn't breathing. We located doctors, three of them.
We did CPR for almost 10 minutes. We used epi, atropine. We ventilated him at 40 times per minute, we pumped his heart as fast as we could (you try making a heart beat 150 times/minute). We watched the ekg each time we paused. He didn't make it.
A week ago, before first going to the emergency clinic because he couldn't pee, he was a healthy cat. Whatever stones may have been present were not affecting his life at all. Yesterday, he died. The owners elected a group cremation, with no ashes returned.
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