Friday morning and a lot has transpired. First let me begin by starting with the fact that he’s still alive, which is a good thing. He’s still battling for his life and still has a long way to go and as always, when you get one thing under control, you’re bound to find something else. Sort of like trying to stop a flood with cheese cloth.

Wednesday:

Here’s Wally in ICU sticking his head out of his oxygen tent portal. He’s so small for a cat whose nickname used to be “Bruiser”.

Wally with one of his doctors. Notice how many wires are coming out of Wally’s paws and neck. Ouch!

Wally has a catheter stuck into his jugular and more pin holes than a cushion. Still he’s blood doping and taking in enhanced oxygen so he’s looking pretty good. Welcome to the BALCO veterinarian hospital.

Wednesday night, Dr. Fox said that they had removed fluid from his lungs but that they couldn’t get it under control. He’s on thyroid medicine but no serious changes one way or the other.

Thursday:

We felt pretty good after seeing Wally on Wednesday walking around in his glass house, and Thursday he was taken off of his monitoring EKG and off the juice. At his highest, Wally’s heart rate was 260 beats per minute and Dr. Fox was very concerned that his heart would just stop. By Thursday his heart rate was down to 160, which was clearly a positive sign. Cindy went to see Wally first and she called me and told me that he didn’t look very good. I told her it was probably because he was out of his oxygen environment and the fact that he was breathing on his own was a good sign. I went to see him later in the afternoon. He was really beat up.

I have to think part of this is that he’s just been through a war. Forget Ironman, this kitty has endured a whole heck of a lot more than we ever will. His paws still show the effects of the EKG leads that he wore for two days when he was severely tachacardic. That’s the worst road rash I’ve seen in awhile.

Bottom line, he’s just tired. I spent about 45 minutes with him just laying in my lap. His catheter is still in his neck and that can’t feel good. He looks so sad. He moved his head around a bit but he really couldn’t walk more than a few steps before falling back down again. He’s both fatigued and still fairly anemic. Dr Fox also told us that he has fluid in his heart and a small mass near the bottom of his heart that they aren’t sure about. Wally will have another echo on Friday morning and we’ll know more then.

Hopefully today will be a better day. Can’t wait to go see him.