Thankful Thursday

 Hi everyone!

It's Mom Sierra here today, and I am joining Angel Brian's Thankful Thursday blog hop today.

I want to apologize for not visiting anyone's blog last week. Spittlebugs hit the fan last Wednesday, and you're about to see why my focus needed to be solely on sweet little Gabe for several days.

A few weeks ago, Gabe was doing really great! He was eating all his meals, being social, and enjoying life. So, the vet and I decided it was time to start weaning Gabe off some of his medications for chronic pancreatitis to see what he needs long-term versus what he doesn't. 

It took nearly two weeks, but we titrated Gabriel off his buprenorphine. Gabriel is quite a sensitive mancat, so we had to lower his buprenorphine dose a tiny bit at a time. After 12 days, he was finally off the medication completely.

Unfortunately, he was showing signs of pain again—not wanting to eat his canned food, hiding in the closet after meals, and not being very social (rather spending nearly all of his time in his bed in the bedroom). 

It seems clear that Gabe still needs his buprenorphine. 

So, after talking to the vet, we decided to put him back on the medication to see if that would help perk him back up. 

Poor Gabriel was sad and miserable last week, waiting for the superpotent medication to leave his system.

Last Wednesday, I gave him 0.1ml buprenorphine per usual. Then I found out about the Wedgewood recall. I checked the bottle I gave him the medication from, and sure enough, it was in a recalled lot. Wedgewood Pharmacy has stated that some of the medications they sent out were underpotent while others were superpotent (too potent). 

Gabriel started acting strange shortly after I gave him his buprenorphine. He was meowing excessively, very hyper, constantly under my feet, couldn't settle.... He was like this for several hours. Then, he crashed. Hard. 

For the next two days, all he wanted to do was sleep, sleep, sleep. It was the kind of sleep where you can't wake your cat up very easily, the kind of sleep where he isn't very responsive to you touching him, gently shaking him to wake him, or talking to him. When I'd pick him up, he was like a noodle. 

I called our vet on Thursday when he didn't seem to be doing better. They had buprenorphine at the clinic for me to come get, safe medication for Gabriel. I was scared to leave him, but he needed his medication, so I quickly went to fetch it. 

While there, I talked to the staff about how sleepy/unresponsive Gabe was. They told me that if he didn't feel better on Friday to let them know so that they could give him something (Naloxone) to counteract the overdose of buprenorphine he'd gotten from the recalled Wedgewood medication. They wanted to wait 48 hours to administer the Naloxone because it can hurt the liver and kidneys. The hope was that the buprenorphine would work its way out of Gabe's body by itself.

So I went home and spent another night watching him closely, making sure I could get some sort of response out of him every little bit.

Friday, I found Gabe ON HIS CUBE BY THE BALCONY DOOR! I just about fell over. I said, "Gabe!" He looked at me. I said, "Gabe, you're awake and alert!!!" He just looked at me like I'd lost my mind. I said, "You've been asleep for two days!" He wasn't concerned. 

At that point, I knew we'd gotten over the worst of it. He has been more himself since. 

Gabriel waits for his blood draw at the vet on Tuesday.

However, he DID have to go to the vet on Tuesday to get some labs done, urine taken, and have a pancreatitis test done. He is still not eating well. 

We are waiting on the results to come in, and we will go from there. 

But he isn't lethargic now. He's pretty social. In fact, he felt so good earlier that he decided he wanted Giovanni to play with him (Giovanni wasn't too agreeable to the idea). 

I am so thankful that Gabriel made it through this awful ordeal. I'm thankful for all the support friends showed us and all the love, purrs, prayers, etc sent to Gabe while he was not well. 

I know that we are some of the lucky ones. I can't bear to think about those pets that weren't as lucky.