He's very quickly found a place in our home and hearts (even Kelly's!).
Last week I wrote about Ike's slow heart rate. The vet taught me how to take his pulse and I take it every few days...sometimes it's 50 beats/minute, but recently it's been around 80. I find that encouraging!
But at his last appointment, blood work also revealed a few more problems. He's anemic. His red blood count was low on our first visit, and it went down even more after a few weeks. New red blood cells are not being generated. So we have to do more testing, bloodwork, maybe ultrasound etc to see if we can find what is wrong. There are many possibilities. One possibility is leukemia. We just won't know for a while.
On the plus side, Ike gained 1-1/2 pounds since our last visit. He's still more than 15 lbs underweight, but it's good that he can gain.
Tests showed no tick-borne illness but the vet started him on a course of antibiotics just in case. Maybe there is some mysterious illness and the antibiotic will clear it all up. It's tough to think that dear Ike may be very ill. But for now he is asymptomatic. He runs, chases his tennis ball, takes long walks, eats heartily, and sleeps on our bed. We just take it one step at a time, thinking positive, praying and trusting. And giving him lots of love.
Ike's a good boy.
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