GREAT news!

Kazak, apparently, is fine. After he got the "bile acid" blood test on Saturday, they called Monday to tell me that his bile acid test came back OK. I said, "Well, what's next?" and the doctor suggested that we were at a crossroads of sorts. I still didn't really want to pay for an abdominal ultrasound if we could avoid it, and she understood and even said it would probably be overkill at this point.

I was about to ask if we could recheck the albumin and BUN levels -- the ones that were decreased in the original blood test -- and would that be cheaper, but she beat me to it, saying that the blood lab gives a discount if an animal needs to be checked again within two weeks.

So we took him in Monday, and I got a message today saying that his albumin and BUN levels, and the rest of the blood sample, were normal. So, it appears that whatever was bothering him is gone, and that it might have just been an infection.

That said, it just means the serious, immediate worry is solved -- no liver failure or liver cancer or anything like that, it appears.

Now, I want to talk to the doctor and see if we can remedy the only two things that "alarm" me at this stage:
1. His propensity to suddenly eat his own poop in the yard, along with anything else he can smell, pick up and eat out there.
2. The fact that he lost about 5-6 pounds since last year's checkup.

I still have a theory that maybe his metabolism or digestive system has aged to where the low-calorie dog food I feed him isn't giving him the proper nutrition anymore. It might be time to switch his diet off that lite diet and onto a senior diet or something. But we'll see, I guess.

Either way, this is a remarkable strain off my subconscious psyche right now, thankfully. I was really worried.