Last Friday night I posted an article about my kitty, Sam. His ear was swelled up like a pillow. I had called the vet first thing Saturday morning but they were unable to see him until Wednesday since he was still eating and drinking normally. It wasn't considered an emergency.
Wednesday morning I came home from work to take him to the vet. He has what is called an Aural Hematoma. Blood was filling in the pocket between the two layers of skin in his outer ear. This is caused by a scratch or an ear infection. We also found out that he has a heart murmur which we never knew before. The doctor offered two treatment options. The first was to just stick a needle in and drain the fluids, but this wouldn't resolve the problem in the long run. The pocket would still be there and it would still keep filling up. The second was to insert a drain valve into his ear which we would manually have to open and drain a couple times a day, but should help to seal the two layers of skin back together. This was much more expensive but I didn't want to see kitty suffering again in the future, so I went for this second option. I left him at the vet so she could perform this minor surgery and went back to work. We picked him up when we got off later that evening. He now has to wear one of those protective collars to keep from scratching at his ear. He hates it! When we brought him home, all of the other cats freaked out when they saw the collar. Two are still in hiding in the basement and refuse to come out.
Thursday evening after work there was a message on the machine from the vet's office just checking up on him and said to give them a call if there was a problem. I thought this was very nice of them to call as a follow up. After dinner we were sitting and watching tv when we noticed that Sam's left pupil was much much smaller than his right, almost a quarter of the size. Now it was his right ear that had the problem, so we didn't know what was going on. We called the vet's office and another vet called back late that evening to reassure us and told us she'd have our regular vet call Saturday morning to check in with us. Friday morning before we left for work we notice that his left eye now was partially covered by one of the inner eyelids in addition to the pupil size being different. So I called the vet again. We took him in yesterday morning to be checked out again. His left ear also has a middle ear infection that hadn't been caught and this was causing the nerves in that eye to not work properly. They called this Horner's Syndrome. To learn more about Horner's Syndrome click the link below. It's definitely worth checking into to know the signs.
http://www.peteducation.com/article.cfm?cls=1&cat=1344&articleid=2477
Sam is now on antibiotics in addition to ear drops that he'd been prescribed on the first visit. We're hoping that these kick in soon! Once he stops trying to scratch at his ears we can remove his collar. When they found he had Horner's Syndrome, they removed the tube in his right ear to try and make him more comfortable. Now we just have to try and keep the hole in his ear open as long as possible so that we can keep draining it.
I hope the link to Horner's helps someone else out. It can be attributed to many different things. In Sam's case, it is his ear infection.
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Comments: 24
hope the healing starts soon
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He had gotten ear mites, and I had been treating them with drops I bought at wal-mart. They don't do anything to help. I guess from what the vet said, it comes from scratching and shaking their heads.
They drained the ear, but filled back up again. I don't know what to do. They say it may take months to heal. And the ear will most likely be scarred and crumpled afterward.