Hey Pet Parents & Pet Lovers,
It has been a pretty rough month for us at Pets Overload, given Beau’s health and recent operations. Well, that’s not all… About a week ago we were petting Beau and felt a few bumps on his back. At first, we weren’t too concerned because when we parted his hair it looked like he had a few scars that could have been from scratching too hard or from his last quarrel with Walker.
We called the vet immediately and let them know, but they didn’t seem too concerned with the bump as they also thought it could be a scar that didn’t heal. They told us they would check it when we came in next (which was a couple days after the phone call.)
After we got Beau’s stitches removed (which was a decently painless process I will describe on a later date), the vets immediately shaved Beau revealing an infected lesion. The lesion was round and our first worry was: he has ringworm. The vets did some tests and confirmed Beau doesn’t have ringworm, but definitely has an infection of some sort.
We were given two options:
- Do extensive tests to figure out what the cause is, and delay treatment waiting up to a week for results.
- Go straight into treatment (with antibiotics and ointments, while watching very carefully over the next few days to see if it heals or gets worse.)
We chose the second. Given the amount of stress Beau has been having with recovery, we thought it would be best to go in with less harsh remedies and not have to put him on another operating table. We also didn’t want to spend a week waiting for results and delaying treatment when the senior vet highly believed that antibiotics and creams would help.
The vet put it this way:
Antibiotics and topical cream are going to be the best choices right now because they aren’t harsh enough on his body to prolong his operations’ healing process. If we start using things like steroids or other forms of treatment it may solve this new problem but may start causing more problems in regards to his cystotomy & perennial urostomy. The more time we delay, the more chances his skin will die and fall off and we will have to go through another surgery to repair him. That will be another long healing process, so at least if we start treating now we can be certain it will get smaller if not disappear completely.
He then offered us the opportunity to send in photos of Beau’s lesion every day so if they see something odd, or troubling we’d go back in immediately for tests/a stronger treatment.
Beau was then given a 2-week injectable antibiotic called Convenia and Theraderm Cream for the lesion which is to be put on him twice a day.
I’m so happy to tell you… I think we made the right choice! Beau’s lesion is getting smaller and looks a lot better, and while we are still a bit worried about it and extremely confused where it came from, we’re happy to see it’s healing and will do anything to make sure he doesn’t get it again.
I will say, I’m still interested in doing tests to see where this came from, but it feels like one of those situations where I have to make a choice where to spend the money on my little one. If Beau is to get worse, we need to make sure we have enough money for those treatments, rather than blowing all of our funds on discovery.
My partner and I made an agreement that if we didn’t see improvement within the first few days we would take him back to the vet for tests, but if things looked like they were getting better, we would trust the vet’s visual diagnosis (and the confirmation that he doesn’t have ringworm) knowing that this time we didn’t have the funds to extensively test him.
So this is where I ask my fellow pet parents. Have you ever been in a situation where you couldn’t do all of the tests based on either preexisting conditions or finances? What did you do? Not that we regret our choice (especially because he is drastically healing), do you feel like you would have made the same choice as us? Let me know in the comments below.
All Posts in this Series:
A Bit of Bad Luck: We found a lesion
December 5, 2017
An Update on the Lesion on our Cat Beau
December 17, 2017
Some okay news about the Lesion
December 22, 2017
Final Update about my Cat’s Skin Lesion
January 22, 2018