If you know me at all, you know my
Now that that's out of the way... I'll get to the story. On Wednesday night, I got home from work and was surprised that Max wasn't waiting for me by the garage door. He's usually so hyper and excited that someone is home! I didn't think much of it and started making dinner. But then 20 minutes went by and I started looking for him, thinking of ways he could have possibly gotten out of the house. Finally after several minutes of searching, I found him way under the bed in our spare bedroom, refusing to come out. I was a little concerned, wondering why he was so scared, but I left him there knowing he'd come out when he got hungry. And he eventually did, and he seemed fine.
A few days later though, we noticed he would randomly start limping... But we couldn't figure out which hind leg was hurt, it seemed like he would switch legs, like maybe they both hurt. We both figured maybe he had jumped off his high tower [which he oddly hadn't been on in several days] and hurt his leg.
Last night I was extremely worried. At times it seemed as though one of his legs would completely give out and he'd sort of drag it behind him, or just lay down for a few minutes and try again. I looked online to see what kind of problems Maine Coons have, and of course every possible worst case scenario pops up and I just lost it. Everything pointed to something called HCM which can cause a deadly blood clot in his heart and can paralyze the hind legs... And of course Maine Coons are one of the breeds this is found in. We just prayed that he would be better in the morning. We really don't have the money for an emergency vet bill right now.
This morning when we woke up, Max [as usual] had slept on our bed all night, and we woke up to him purring and acting very happy. I was so relieved, thinking that he wasn't in pain anymore! But then when we went to get out of bed, he tried to stand up, meowed, and then just kind of fell over. He tried and tried to stand up and get off the bed, but he just couldn't do it. My heart just broke... The poor thing couldn't even stand up! It was certainly getting worse. So off went Jared and Max to the ER.
300 disgusting dollars later, and they still can't tell us what's wrong with him. Thanks a lot, you worthless vet! He did say Max had a small heart murmur [which is yet another sign of HCM], but that could have shown up because he was so nervous. They took an X-ray but everything looked fine. And of course Max didn't limp while he was there because all he wanted was to get out of the room, no matter how much it hurt to move. So here we are with pain meds and no answer.
He's still limping around the house and especially has a hard time going up the stairs. I just don't know what to do! Poor thing seems so out of it :( Please keep him in your thoughts... Any tips and/or ideas are very much appreciated!
