Hi all!  This is my first post here.  It may be a long one! LOL!  I have a 9 year old Maine Coon named George (we call him Budders) who presented with limping several months ago.  We thought it was a soft tissue injury and it cleared up on its own.  Then it came back and got worse.  By the time we got him to the vet, there was a large tumor on the mid-shaft humerus.  The vet suspected a vaccine induced sarcoma and recommended immediate amputation.  She advised that the vaccine companies are good about reimbursement and that we shouldn't worry about the money right now.  That was on a Saturday, his surgery was scheduled for Tuesday.  She had contacted the vaccine company and they advised they would pay up to $3000 if it was VIS.  Since we were kind of putting the cart before the horse on this one, it was kind of a leap of faith on our part and the vets part.  She was willing to sit on the balance and wait for reimbursement from the drug company instead of me paying the bill and waiting the 10-12 weeks for the money once all the paperwork was filed.  That's how confident she was that it was VIS.  If it wasn't, they would still pay for the "biopsy" procedure and we would be responsible for the rest.  The prognosis, as long as the margins were clean, was pretty good since he was an otherwise healthy middle aged cat.

He had his surgery and did pretty well.  They kept him overnight and sent him home Wednesday afternoon with a long acting buprinex injection before he left, miloxicam once a day and gabapentin 2 pills once a day.   He was pretty goofy when we got him home due to the Bup.  They did not bandage the wound (he had staples) and they left a penrose drain in that was to be taken out Saturday morning.  They said he would probably drain a little and that we could help the wound by applying warm packs twice a day.  He licked the incision a little but didn't seem to bother it too much.  We took him in Saturday to get the drain removed and we learned that he had popped a couple staples.  They advised to bring him back in Monday morning and they would close it back up.  We got home, he crawled into his favorite hiding spot and went to sleep.  Later that evening, things started to go south.

The next morning I noticed that he had not used his litter box during the night and he seemed kind of lethargic.  I know the Gabapentin has a sedating effect so I held off on his dose that morning to see if he would wake up enough to eat and drink.  He continued to hide in his cupboard most of the day.  By that night I was freaking out.  His gums were nearly white, he wasn't eating or drinking and his drainage seemed to be smelling a little foul.  I stayed up with him all night giving him little squirts of water by syringe and trying to get him to eat individual pieces of kibble.  He wouldn't eat canned food, I even tried tuna and tuna water.

When I brought him in Monday morning, I made sure that they knew that something wasn't right with him.  They told me they would advise the doctor when she came in.   About 4 hours later the vet called with bad news.  Budders was anemic and the wound was very infected and would probably need multiple surgeries.  We still didn't have the pathology report back so we didn't know how much the vaccine company would be paying.  She was calling to get a sense of where we were at as far as our commitment to treating this cat.  I advised her that if it came down to it, I would start selling worldly possessions to pay her what I owed her.  She was still pretty confident that the vaccine company would at least be covering the amputation surgery but this part might be ours. 

They took him to surgery again to open up the wound and have a look.  Turns out there was a lot of internal blood loss that neither of us had seen and there was a lot of dead tissue in the wound.  The plan was to leave the wound open, pack it with a special gauze that would help the remaining tissue granulate and eventually get it to the point where they could close it back up again.  At this point I was under the impression that it was only the portion of the wound that had gapped open that was the problem.  So I'm thinking this thing is about the size of a silver dollar.  He stayed in the hospital and had another surgery this past Thursday.  By Friday the would was looking really good and they determined that he could come home for a weekend pass starting Saturday morning.  They would repack the wound right before I took him and then it wouldn't have to be touched on Sunday.  Monday they plan on closing him up if the wound still looks good. 

When I went to pick him up yesterday, the tech showed me pictures of the wound and I nearly fainted (I'm a retired paramedic of 23 years and this almost made me sick because it was my own little man).  It wasn't just a silver dollar sized wound that was packed.  They had opened up the entire surgical incision.  His whole right shoulder area was open to the world.  Now granted, it was packed and laced in place with some suture material but geesh!  I had gotten the idea of using a onsie from reading here and I had brought one with me.  I asked it it might be a good idea to put him into one to keep him from messing with it and keeping litter and other junk out of it.  They thought it was a great idea and put it on him before I left.

Got him home yesterday and set up our bathroom as the kitty ICU again.  They had given him an appetite stimulant to get time to eat so he munched on some kibble when he got home.  I gave him his meds early in the evening and like I figured it knocked him right out.  We had made a spot for him to cuddle on the bed with us and he was very content until 1:30 this morning when he wanted off the bed and back into his cupboard in the bathroom.  He did pee in the litter box this morning and I think he ate a little.  I'm very nervous having him home with such a wound but we're keeping it covered and clean with his onsie.  I kind of can't wait until tomorrow for his final surgery so he can start his final healing.

Oh!  Almost forgot......after his first debridement surgery last Monday, the histo/pathology report came back in.   It was not a vaccine induced sarcoma but an osteosarcoma.  The vet says that's pretty good news in a way.  The margins were very clean, his xrays showed no mets and with the amputation, his survival chances are excellent.  The bad news is that the vaccine company will only pay for a portion of it now.  She's still going to work with us on the balance.  We are running a fundraising campaign to try and come up with the rest of it.  Although, she's still saying to not worry about the money right now but to worry about getting Budders better.

I'm very thankful I found this site and all it's resources.  We're in for the whole ride and it's nice to have a place like this to help with our journey.