We had a bit of an emergency on Thursday night. Rowan ate his dinner as normal. Shortly after I went to bed, he threw up 5 times in the space of an hour. Something was irritating his stomach. Kayleigh was very concerned and woke me up so I could drive us to the emergency vet. It was a 45 minute drive and Rowan was miserable the whole way. He didn't even meow and he's otherwise a very vocal cat.
The vet could see that Rowan was ill. She felt his stomach and he cried out. When she took his temperature, it was over 40°C. She was very concerned about that. She then took Rowan to another room for a basic scan and some blood tests. The results were fine but because of his temperature and stomach soreness, we (Kayleigh and I) decided to leave Rowan overnight so he could have more thorough tests and a detailed ultrasound the next day (the same day really, it was 2am.
Later that morning I cancelled my volunteering at the Salvos because I didn't know if or when we could pick Rowan up. The vet rang Kayleigh and said he'd thrown up once more but his temperature was going down. The ultrasound found that some lymph nodes were enlarged but nothing else. The vet wanted us to leave Rowan there all day so that they could be sure his temperature would continue to drop.
I ended up going to work until 6:30pm and after I got home Kayleigh rang the vet once more. She said that Rowan had eaten and kept it down which was a really good sign. His temperature was also normal. So we went to collect him.
We were in the waiting room when a vet nurse brought Rowan out in his carrier. He had his back to us but as soon as he heard Kayleigh's voice he turned around and meowed. The vet told us that Rowan had not been amused by his stay in hospital. I'm not surprised - both front legs, throat and stomach had been shaved. He'd been on intravenous fluids the whole time which was probably uncomfortable.
And well, $1600 later, he's fine. He has pain medication and anti-nausea medication. Not long after he was home, he ate dinner and was playing again.
