On Thursday night at 10:30pm The Luscious Frankie J swallowed a sewing needle....
A torn up pair of jeans...
Holes around belt loops and pocket corners.
I finished patching, and left the needle on the coffee table - still threaded.
Frankie J loves thread, string, hair - anything long and thin and apparently...edible. I went to the computer and thought, "I need to put that thread away before Frankie eats it." ...turned around and it was gone. Needle and all.
About two and a half hours later, after a visit to Berkeley Dog and Cat, I walked through my door, exhausted, with Frankie in tow. I had a disk with an x-ray showing the needle in her stomach, and a head full of all of the possibilities of what could happen next. The vet thought maybe I should leave her at the hospital on an IV overnight... that we should x-ray again tomorrow to see where it was, and then decide if we should do an endoscopy to get it out (if it was still in her stomach) or cut her open. He said the needle could poke things, pass through things, or get stuck and cause problems - maybe death. He said it would be very expensive (thousands of dollars), so it would be better to wait until morning when (it would still be thousands of dollars, but) we would no longer be under emergency rates... but at that point the needle might no longer be in the stomach so our options would change. Mixed into all of this, he said he had just seen a kitten who swallowed a needle and, a few days later, pooed that sucker right out with no problem... He didn't think the kitten would be able to pass it because the kitten was so small, but it did.
His advice was dizzying and felt endless, money based, and non-conclusive. When I asked him what I should do, he ran through the possibilities again... and, when I asked what he would do, I was bombarded with all of the things I could do or that could happen AGAIN.
Finally, I asked what would happen if I took Frankie home to see if she would pass it - would it cause a lot of damage if I brought her back a couple days later if it hadn't come out? He said, he couldn't be sure - but he didn't think it'd cause too much damage....
I went home and found this on the internet: http://www.petlovers.com/vb//showthread.php?t=29981
I fed Frankie extra food, cried a little out of frustration, exhaustion, and uncertainty, and went to bed. I was kind of a mess...but Frankie seemed fine.
When I woke up the next day, Frankie still seemed fine. I fed her again and went to work. I checked on her at lunch... she was fine. After work, fine. I fed her extra again.
On Friday, I went to work and didn't make it home at lunch.
When I got home that night, Frankie seemed strange... she didn't greet me at the door, and seemed really sluggish. I tried to play with her with a shoestring, but she just laid there letting it hit her in the face. It'd almost been two days and the needle hadn't shown up in her poo.
I didn't want to go back to Dog and Cat, so I called The Broadway Pet Hospital to see if I could talk to someone. They were closed, so I left a message on their after hours hotline.
After checking some veterinary clinic reviews, I decided to call the Pets Referral Center as well. The woman I spoke with there listened to the situation and said that I had done the right thing by feeding Frankie extra, and that maybe Frankie was sluggish because I fed her too much... but if she was acting strange or in pain, maybe I should bring her in. Frankie didn't seem like she was in pain, and had definitely acted similar in the past when she'd gotten into extra food so... I decided to wait another day.
Later, I got a call back from the Broadway Pet Hospital. The doctor left a message saying that Frankie could pass the needle, that she might be acting weird because she was about to pass it, and that I could probably wait...unless she was vomiting or acting really depressed.
On Saturday, Frankie was back to her normal self. A little fatter, but energetic, and fine. I finally found the needle and thread early Sunday morning. *whew*
10 comments:
I'm sooo glad that Frankie J is okay, and that we were able to deal with this in the most natural way possible.
We decided to wait till morning. Do you think we can do it? Or maybe till next morning? What to do?
I hope your cat is okay!! If it seems like he's acting strange, it might be worth it to pay the money to have him checked.