Baby Belle used up another life this week.
Before I proceed further, it's going to be important to note that it's going to have a happy ending. Eventually.
4 days ago, I was at work, DH was home, all the beasts were doing their normal beast stuff. DH suddenly heard shrieking from the kitchen and rushed in to find Belle on the floor, thrashing around. As he told me on the phone, there was blood everywhere. He wrapped her in a towel and got her up on the table to keep her under some control. I got home and we got her back to the clinic pronto. There were laws broken.
Work knew we were coming and snapped into action. They were amazing, did all the right stuff, and we got her stabilized, diagnosed and treatment begun. Somehow, she'd suffered the kind of head trauma that comes from a fall from very high, higher than a counter. We can only think she was trying for the refrigerator or had achieved the fridge and tried for the top of the cabinets. In any case, she didn't land on her feet and the force of the fall had split the roof of her mouth slightly - that was the source of the blood. She was seizing initially and had significant neuro signs.
She stayed at work and I stayed with her, both working and monitoring her. That night, we took her to the emergency clinic to continue fluids, drugs and seizure watch overnight. She couldn't get up or walk, everything circled and bent to the left, her left pupil was the wrong size, and I could go on. By the next afternoon, she could roll up on her chest, marine crawl with her front legs (the back legs weren't working at all) and was more responsive. She came home with us.
Her schedule is now to be at work with me during the day, where I can monitor and care for her. At night, she comes home and the care continues. She's on meds and when she's not sleeping in a lap, she's safe in a large plastic tote that she can't get out of. She's improving gradually every day. She started walking somewhat normally night before last, although she fell over every few steps. By today, she's walking better and falling less; unfortunately, that means she wants to wander the house again, so the tote is necessary when I have to do other things. She was being syringe-fed because she was too uncoordinated to eat on her own; I tempted her with a shallow dish of half-and-half this morning and she managed to lap a little for the first time (and dunk her nose and sneeze, as well). By tonight, I fed her a syringe of water, a larger syringe of kitten pate, and presented a dish of the pate. She managed almost a tablespoon of it on her own. (Another water syringe to finish.)
This is going to be a long haul. It may be months before she's recovered as much as she's going to and nobody knows exactly how much that's going to be. But she's young and strong and given how things are going, we're already certain that she's going to have a very good quality of life.
And if she ever does anything like this again, I'll kill her. (Not really.)
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