02181: Yoshi's Long Road Ahead

So we finally had Yoshi's ultrasound today as part of the on-going efforts to fully diagnose his condition. The ultrasound confirmed abnormalities in his kidneys consistent with Nephropathy, which is really just the formal catch-all term of kidney disease. He's not out of the woods and we still need to work on getting his system stabilized so it's really hard to say how things will go. Either way, it looks like Yoshi will have some long-term lifestyle changes consider given we manage to get him out of this neck of the woods.

We were getting really worried since he had hardly eaten since he was discharged last Saturday, and even then the vets had shared they too were having trouble getting him to eat. During today's visit we got clearance to go back to his more "regular" food provided we avoided raw meat or any seasoning like salt or pepper. He's also back on his vitamins to supplement his system and to encourage his appetite.

Thankfully, upon getting home he was willing enough to have some chicken breast and was greedily eating from my hand as I cut up the chicken into bite-sized pieces. Watching him eat made me want to cry, but hey it has been a rather emotional day.

Short term is still mostly monitoring and making sure that he continues to eat and he takes the many different supplements the doctors have prescribed. This also means stuffing said medicines directly down his throat since Yoshi is really finicky about medicine. He'll also need continuing doses of saline solution injected into his skin as a sort of alternative to dialysis every 2-3 days. There were also talks of a synthetic version of the hormone that his kidneys should be producing that should help supplement his system to address the immediate symptoms of anemia and partly the creatinine build-up. None of this is actually a cure - there's really no road for that.

Tobie and I continue to hope for the best but I know we're also bracing for the worst should things turn. The doctor did warn us that it may be a bit of a roller coaster from this point on as he will have good days and bad days as he continues to fight this. They've had dogs with similar conditions continue to live decent enough lives, but like a said a lot of things will need to change. Once the kidneys are damaged, there's really no going back to being perfectly healthy for him. But at least we caught it as early as we could have, at least based on the evidence. None of Yoshi's other visits had indicated any chance of this happening so there's really no point in trying to second guess if we had missed something.

We'll do our best to help Yoshi through this and make sure he has as long and as happy a life as possible. Whether that means a few more years or just a few more months, we'll make the time count. It's pretty sad to think about and as I write this I can feel the fear beginning to rise up in me again. But damn it, we're all fighters and so I know I'm not giving up within reason and I doubt Yoshi will either.

We can do this.

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