grayness

Pink ...is... attractive

Red or green apple trees?

I love South Carolina. My uncle, aunt and cousins live in Loris.

Seriously...people suck.

**Cheers from afar!**

Yay for Bob!

aw... that's unfortunate. I hope it is operable. Are there any medications that can be administered? My uncle is taking a medication for the tumors in his remaining kidney that costs $6840 a month.

Poor Bob! Hope there's something that can be done.

Best wishes to Bob!

That's too bad. Does the vet have any ideas about the blindness? Aside from the expense (~$1000 + follow-up blood tests at 1, 3, and 12 months), I highly recommend the radioiodine treatment. Terhu gained two pounds back within three months and his thyroid levels were normal within six weeks. He is not a traveler and is very wary of strange people, so having to go to the clinic and be taken care of by strangers was the most traumatic thing for him. He showed no signs of weakness or of not feeling okay during the four (some treatments are eight) days he was there (they had webcams set up in the cattery, so I could go to their website to view him in realtime - except for the lag - during the day and evening). The more challenging part after he was home was the two weeks in isolation from the main part of the house and having to flush all of his waste (or bag it in a double-lined garbage can where it could be kept for three months before normal disposal). And I could only get one hour a day with him for those two weeks. But he was over the trauma and his personality was back to normal within a couple of days of returning home. He was only about 10 when it was done, though. If he had been 13 or 14, I might have opted for medication instead.

Good luck.

My kids have never needed to go under for getting their blood drawn. Is that something your vet does? My vet was able to draw Terhu's blood in the back room and bring him right back afterwards. It's been the same way any time any of the kids needed to give blood samples. I'd definitely get a second opinion.

Yeah, I thought there would be some kind of radiation sickness involved, but he seemed to be fine. My understanding is that the thyroid gland absorbs iodine, so it is very targeted in what it affects and only needs a relatively small amount. My vet spoke very highly about it going in (she has never seen a relapse or failure in any of her patients, although she's read about it happening on rare occasions) and I couldn't be happier with the results. Former member Alpo did it with one of his cats at the same clinic where I took Terhu. That clinic guarantees a second treatment for free within the first 12 months if the first one is ineffective or there are signs that it is coming back, but I don't know if that is standard with most of them.

" "I" before "E" *except* after "C" "

*groan*

Yeah, I saw that Loe was gone again. Guessing she won't be back as quickly this time.