The vet text me on the way home, Opal is settled in for the night with pain meds and fluid on board. Her ultrasound results came back all good, no cysts!
However her bladder is full of thick sludge! Vet will phone me in the morning to discuss new plan of action.
What shall I expect with sludge?
Ruby had bladder sludge at age 2, and it ended up causing a full blockage.
She was seen as an emergency late one evening as they said due to the blockage the risk of leaving her overnight was too great - it could cause kidney damage.
The vet clearly explained the options - they would start by anaesthetising her and try to flush from the outside first.
Apparently this has a reasonable rate of success with an experienced vet, but can be risky if the vet doesn't know what they are doing.
The advantages are that there are no wounds to care for after the procedure and it is less invasive.
Piggy is x-rayed and ultra-sounded at the start and finish and also during if clarification is required.
The second option was to make a coupe of small incisions and flush from inside the bladder. This is a less technical, but more invasive procedure, plus the wounds can make recovery a little trickier.
Ruby had the external flush and the whole procedure took less than an hour.
Afterwards she was on glucosamine, antibiotics and pain killers for 2 weeks to reduce the inflammation and chances of infection.
In her case recovery was slow, and she also needed top up feeds for around 10 days, plus 2 different types of antibiotics.
But she did make a full recovery and went on to live another 4 years without a single bladder related problem (despite the vet warning us that this may be a recurring issue).
I hope this helps to let you know what to expect and we send healing wheeks to the lovely Opal.
And just to clarify, I do work full time so the vet bill wasn’t just paid by Jon