I'd appreciate prayers and positive thoughts for my furry baby Lucy.
As many of you know, she is not only the sweetest kitty ever, but she is also our "booger beast" as she suffers from chronic sinus issues due to feline herpes. We've done our best to manage her condition ever since we adopted her 11 years ago. We have her on Lysine supplements to try to keep her healthy (the only real treatment, other than antibiotics to help with bad flare-ups) , but it only barely keeps things under control. I think it gets harder on her the older she gets.
Three years ago, she had a particularly bad time and we worried she'd lose an eye. Thankfully, she managed a full recovery. But this week, literally over night, her eye went from having me question if she might need help from the vet to get over this flare-up.... to HORRIBLE (I was so grateful we already had an appointment for Trigger today!). And now, $400 and an eye irrigation and several antibiotic injections later, her eye is stitched closed to let it heal... and the vet gave her a 50/50 chance of keeping the eye.
It makes me feel like a terrible pet owner.
My fear of her herpes diagnosis increased after watching a terribly scaring episode of "Hoarders" on Netflix a while back. It was one of those "crazy cat ladies" episodes... only the situation was SOOOOO bad that they could only get one room of the house liveable and didn't even touch the upstairs. The majority of her cats had to be put down because they had feline herpes and their eyes were literally rotting out of their heads and they couldn't breathe. Cats had died all over the house and the disease had spread to almost all of the cats. Knowing Lucy is fighting the same disease really scared me. Knowing what it could do to her. Knowing how close she came to losing her eye the last time. Knowing that I have exposed all of my cats to it. (I cling to what the last vet told us.... "if the other cats were going to catch it, they would have years ago" since they've all been together for years and years.)
And now... I am that bad cat owner.
I didn't get her in for antibiotics weeks ago, even though her congestion seemed to be getting worse. I noticed her eye getting a little red and only upped her Lysine, not wanting to pay for a vet visit. I didn't really address it until I noticed her eye getting watery on Monday. And all I did was mention that I thought she'd need a visit "next" when Beorn told me on Tuesday that he'd made Trigger an appointment (for catch up on shots) for today. I never imagined her eye could go from watery to completely ulcerated in under 48 hours. Luckily we had that appointment and could just take her in with Trigger.
I'm hoping she heals well and can keep her eye. She's definitely a fighter. The vet wasn't optimistic about her eye last time. Yet she made it through with flying colors. She survived being attacked by a wandering pit bull. She's managed to come home safely from all of her wanderings... from wandering to a nearby park and picking fights with the dogs there, to somehow getting all the way to Spanish Fork in a matter of a few hours. What's a little eye ulcer for such a powerful creature?
I just hate feeling like I've done wrong by her...
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