Good Lydia News — and Passing On Your Chin Skritches

Good news about our cat, Lydia. As regular readers of this blog know, our cat Lydia has been having serious health problems: she was recently diagnosed with cancer, and has also been having serious problems with her appetite and digestion, which were a problem on their own and were also making the cancer difficult to treat.

We went ahead with the surgery for her digestive problems on Saturday — and it went extremely well. She got through the surgery with no trouble, she is bouncing back surprisingly quickly, her appetite has already improved, and her mood is already better than it was before the surgery. (Although some of the chipper mood may be the Fentanyl patch…) We won’t know for sure until she’s had a few days to recover, but we are now extremely hopeful that, once her recovery from the surgery is complete, the digestive problems will be behind us, and the cancer will be treatable.

They also did some exploration of the cancer while they were doing the surgery, and it looks like it’s not as advanced as we’d feared it might be. The mass they saw earlier on the ultrasound turns out not to be cancer — it was just adhesions and fatty tissue. They did a biopsy on the cancerous lymph nodes as well, and we’ll have a better picture of what exactly the cancer is and how to proceed with it when those test results are back.

So good news all around. We still have a lot of cat care ahead of us, which is going to continue suck some time and energy, but it seems as if we may be heading towards a more even keel.

And both Ingrid and I want to thank you for your very kind thoughts during this truly lousy time. The support of this community means a lot to us. Many of you said to give Lydia chin skritches and belly rubs for you: she doesn’t much want her belly rubbed right now, what with the major abdominal surgery and all… but we spent many hours on Sunday watching the World Series (GO GIANTS!) and passing on your skritches to her. Here are photos. We’ll keep you posted. Thanks again.

Lydai 1

Lydia 2

Lydia 3

Lydia 4

Lydia 5

Lydia 6

Lydia 7

{advertisement}
Good Lydia News — and Passing On Your Chin Skritches
{advertisement}

6 thoughts on “Good Lydia News — and Passing On Your Chin Skritches

  1. 6

    That’s such great news!
    I recognise that nude belly look – one of ours had to have an ultrasound for suspected heart issues and months later it’s still looking kind of sparse. We still like blowing raspberries on it and she stll gets embarrassed. That’s good though; prior to these tests we thought she had NO shame!
    Continued skritches and love to all four of you (can’t let anyone be left out!).

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *