u/PatheticOwl

Rewatching the original A-team series and I can not help to see Reginald Barclay playing HM Murdock as the excentric, unhinged but quietly extremely smart and competent free mind that he is.

https://preview.redd.it/vq6eorihjwhh1.jpg?width=1448&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=098ade6861890e6c4e09d68082854ca286176cd5

Meet Lexi. Lexi is a 16 yo sweet 'n spicy torti. She was diagnosed with diabetes at age 11 and given about 2 years prognosis due to her being hard to regulate. She said "bet!". This spring, her diabetes was finally perfectly under control. And then she started biting a specific spot on her tail about 7 cm below the tip. She created a wound. Vet put her in a cone: within two days she found a way to bite the tail around the cone. Vet put her in a bigger cone, five days, and she figured out how to use her paws to push the tail into the cone. So we put a bandage on it. Reenforced with sports tape. She bit through all of it. So we put a plastic brace in the layers of the bandage. She chewed through the first one. But we also upped her medication: she already is on (aside from obviously insulin) metacam for atritis, but she also gets fishoil, B12 and folate for neuropathy, as well as a TCM based herbal hotspot medicine to calm and heal the skin. All those made her less focussed on the tail so the past bandages could stay on really well and undisturbed. But even after 6 weeks of fully undisturbed rest the wounds do not close. It looks granulated, not infected, just not closing. It weeps a transparant exudans.

Today we go to the vet to check it again.

As far as I understood there is a choice between management and tail amputation.
Management is basically keeping her in cone and bandage ad infinitum and hope it does not get infected. She managed relatively well with the limitations of both, plays, cuddles, eats, has supervised outside time, but it's obviously a drop in QoL.
Amputation comes with all the risks of major surgery on a 16yo with diabetes but with the chance of a normal/better QoL for the time she has left. We are in Europe so while it wont be cheap, costs will probably not be prohibitive on it's own, but I do fear bringing her and not getting her back, and her last memories being me leaving her behind at the vet.

I'd love to hear from folks who had any surgery done on an elderly cat, experiences with tail amputations or thoughts on different avenues of treatment to discuss with my vet.

I called the vet today because my pasteurella positive boy (ex stray, probably dumped because of the infection) was mildly off, mostly less playful and a look of not 100% in his eyes.

Vet assistant immediately goes: "o, well especially before the weekend we sure have to see him, because rabbits are funky that way." So the vet just added me onto a full agenda and will see me at the end of the workday.