The State of the Bus
Naps do a Bus good.
We think Sheba
had a pretty good summer with us. She gets a pill twice a day to
keep her blood pressure in check, and every night Alicia gives her 100
mLs of lactated ringer solution to help flush toxins from her
bloodstream. She eats homemade all-organic food from a
recipe created by a holistic vet specifically for cats with renal
failure. "Country doctor" wisdom would say she's doing well--she's a
rickety, cranky old cat to be sure, but her appetite and energy levels
are pretty good, no suprises in the litter box, and she even purrs
sometimes. A casual observer probably wouldn't guess she was sick.
However, a
checkup this past Monday revealed that despite all our efforts, our
poor Bus is slowly declining. Blood tests showed that her BUN and
creatinine levels have significantly risen since they were last checked
in February, and she's lost half a pound. The only silver lining
is that the medication has done its job and brought her blood pressure
down to normal.
The vet had to
remind us that fighting kidney failure is a losing battle, and the best
we can hope to do is to prolong the inevitable. He believes
that at the current rate she's going, Sheba probably has about another
year before things take a turn for the worse.
This brings us
to a conundrum: in a year we will be shoving off for the start of
our big trip. Is it fair to bring Sheba along if her health is
fragile? Should we try to get her into one of these goofy cat retirement homes,
or place an unfair burden on our families? On the other hand,
nobody takes care of her the way we do, she's settled into life
here on the boat, and might the sun, warmth and clean air of our trip
actually be good for her? We wish we could ask her what she'd
prefer. It's hard to say what's best in our weird situation.
Until it's time
to decide, we've doubled our efforts to encourage Sheba pig out as
often as possible, added a kidney-helping herbal remedy to her food,
and vowed to appreciate her while she's here with us.