The Brad Hole

I'm making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS.

We've had two critical victories today for Ian, and frankly we had run out of hope. We had scheduled an appointment with the vet for tomorrow at 2:30 to euthanize him, and honestly we chose that time only because it was the earliest we could get him in. He's been whining non-stop for the past few days, undoubtedly from hunger and thirst. His coat looks like complete hell from dehydration and he's fairly bony now. His average weight is 15 lbs, he was 14 before surgery last Thursday and he was down to 13 on Monday. We didn't attempt to weight him since then but it wouldn't shock me if he's down to 12 now. He was slightly overweight before ("big boned!") but now his big bones are poking through.

So with that background, this morning he took a 5 minute drink out of running water from a faucet, and continued to do so throughout the day. Because he can put his mouth under it sideways, he's able to counteract his missing lapping tongue action and "chomp" his way to a drink. I can't overstate how happy I was to see him do that, but we also knew that as good a sign as it was, he still had to eat for it to mean much.

Our attempts to feed him have failed pretty badly. He's attempted continuously to eat from his food bowl and also eat wet food we've placed down, but he never has gotten past smacking his lips and drooling on it, as his tongue was too integral a part of picking up and chewing his food. We tried feeding him his favorite soft treats; we were able to hold those above his head and drop them into his mouth. They'd go in, he'd happily chew and then they'd fall out on the floor and he couldn't finish. It was tragic - we went through that cycle 8 or 9 times in a row and each time the treat fell out after a few chews, then he gave up. I had tried feeding him some baby food on my finger. He got so far as to take a nibble, but then walked away and wouldn't try again. The torture of it for us was that he was trying to eat and drink and he wasn't giving up, but he couldn't figure out a way to make it work.

Fast forward to tonight. In desperation, I broke open a new bottle of stage 1 baby food - chicken in chicken broth, put a huge dollop on my finger to my shock he nibbled it all. He kept on going until my finger was entirely in his mouth and he could use his nubbin of a tongue to clean it, then he bit down on it as hard as he could, drawing blood. It was a positive, if extremely painful, sign. I gave him a few more finger-fulls then piled it up in a Close Encounters-style Devil's Tower in the baby food dish as my finger was starting to bleed. At that point, the flood gates were open: so long as I could keep it piled up, he would continue to eat. He polished off the entire baby food jar and a portion of another (turkey in turkey broth).

Now clearly this is not an ideal diet and we can't leave our faucet running all the time. But we've made significant forward progress and I feel better knowing that at least we won't have to put him down because he's starving to death. It's likely of course that the cancer will kick in again soon and he'll deteriorate, but when that time comes we'll know and we're prepared for it. Our plan now is to have the vet do some x-rays and give us a better prognosis along with diet tips so we can manage him from here on out.

Edit: in the time since I published this and now, Ian "asked" for more food and we fed him another little jar of the stage 1 chicken baby food. He ate 75% of it. That's the tubby Ian I know.