Sunday, November 20, 2005

Swimming and swelling

Jazz's blood was tested for kidney function this week - the first time for a month or so - and his kidneys are deteriorating, so Fiona decided that we'd try giving him 2 litres of fluids by drip this week instead of the usual 1. The first bag went through on Friday evening (luckily, it was flowing well) and the second on Saturday morning.

On Saturday afternoon, we went down to Southampton for Mark's birthday, and gave Jazz a short (11 minute) swim. He wanted to go in the pool, but was obviously struggling and tired by the end of the session, which is why we stopped when we did.

When he got out and I showered him, I noticed a largish lump under his left "armpit" - the same leg that we'd used for the chemo and drip this week. My initial assumption was that he had another tumour there. Then, in the next hour, his left foreleg swelled up, and fluids were "leaking" through the skin.

I rang the vet for advice (Justin was on duty this weekend). He suggested that it could just be the drip fluids "overflowing", and to keep him moving, massage the swollen leg, and bandage it progressively from the foot up. The massage and bandaging helped, but the leg would swell up again soon after stopping massage / removing the bandage. We decided not to go out with Lynn and Mark after all, and took him home and put him to bed.

In the morning, the leg was still swollen, although it didn't seem to have been causing him any discomfort at any point. I completely bandaged the leg fairly tightly, and left it bandaged for a couple of hours. After this, the swelling stayed down. The swelling under his armpit had gone too, so no tumour recurrence after all.