This morning we had to take Pumpkin to the vet again. The good news is that he is eating a lot more out of the bowl all by himself. We still use the E-Tube, but we allow him to try to eat as much as possible by himself first. The bad news is that when I was looking him over as he was eating I discovered a very nasty ruptured abscess on his shoulder area. Luckily, there was no puss or other malignant material oozing from it. It appeared to just be a gaping hole right down to his shoulder muscle (sorry TMI). So we got that taken care of at the vet & dressed.
Originally the vet's idea was that he was hit by a car to receive these injuries. They have since revised it to a dog attack of some kind. We know there have already been two cats in our area that have been viciously mauled by a couple of dogs. So it is not entirely outside the realm of possibility that this is what happened to Pumpkin during his time away from our house.
The reason they have this new theory is because of the type of bacterial infection we believe that Pumpkin has. L-Form bacteria has no cell wall. Normally antibiotics will go to kill a bug like this one by attaching to the cell wall. Since L-Form B's don't have a cell wall they are extraordinarily hard to culture & treat. We have doubled his dosage of doxycyclin which is a heavy duty medication aimed at treating this type of infection. Dr. V was encouraged by the fact that the abscess was "dry" and that manipulation of the wound didn't produce any oozing or anything. That has him in the mind of the fact that the drugs would be working. That is why we are ramping it up. Hopefully he will respond, but the way the infection is manifesting itself is by these abscesses that we don't know about until they rupture.
The other bit of good news is that the hernia seems to be a solved issue. The doctor was not concerned and it appears to be healing by itself. :)
So right now we are continuing as is with the feeding/eating schedule, his pain meds, and just dosing the ever-living crud out of that infection with all we can throw at it. Hopefully this will work. Keep up those prayers and well-wishes, we certainly do appreciate it.
