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| Things are going well here. I guess it's time for an update. I'm writing my thesis and finishing up this summers research. Rob and I have started mountain biking. My Dad is in Montana motorcycling around the country. My mom is in Mound Oklahoma teaching and maybe coming over to look for a job in Fayetteville. Rob is back from India and has about two years left to finish his PhD. I'll be looking for a job around here in December when I graduate. Wish me luck. | | |
| Tuesday was a bad day. You might not want to read this if dentist stuff makes you queasy. I waited too long to get a crown on a tooth I had a root canal on. It got brittle and chipped. I had to miss the field trip in lab and go to the dentist. You know it's not going to be your best day ever when the dentist says, "Brandy, get me the bone scissors." The dentist had to extract the tooth. I was there for three hours. It was awful. It was a molar on the top of my mouth and the roots went all the way up and through my nasal cavity. I then had a hole connecting my nostril to the roof of my mouth down through my head. That was also awful. I was supposed to gargle salt water to help the wound heal that night. It was ok until I tipped my head back and it went up that hole (which hurt) causing me to tip my head forward and it all ran out my nose. Now I'll have to go to an oral surgeon to get a screw implanted that a fake crown can be put on. He gave me some hydrocodone pills to take for a few days which helped. The stitches over the hole have been coming out though. It's hard not to play with the ends of them with my toungue even though it hurts a little. I can tell it's starting to heal though. The hole is smaller and I can no longer suck air down that hole through the middle of my head, just the normal breathing holes.
Anyway, just thought I'd share. It helps to share sometimes. | | |
| So we thought we knew what was wrong. However, a week ago she threw up in the house so we got to see all the loveliness that was in her stomach. She had two days worth of undigested pills. The gel capsules were perfectly intact. That's pretty damn weird. We took her to the vet again. He did some more tests and said we'd get the results in a week or two. Now he thinks that she might have a hypothalmus gland malfuncion. I guess it releases different steroids and hormones for the proper function of the kidneys and other parts of the body. This problem is rare but can disguise itself as almost anything because it controls functions of other organs. If that's what it is we can give her some pills to supplement it and help it get working properly. She might not have to be on the special food forever. He also gave us pills to open the valve at the end of her stomach to let stuff through easier and some different antibiotics, oh yeah and tums. She is taking four different kinds of medication a day now. Lets hope we find out what's really wrong this time. | | |
| Rob and I picked up Cricket the day after she had surgery. They wanted to keep her overnight to start her on all her meds and get some more fluids in her. So we pick her up and take her home. She looks ok, still kinda groggy though. She gets up on the couch, and lays down in her usual spot. When I look over 10 minutes later her staples are on the couch and I can see a little bit of the pink shiny stuff because the skin is starting to pull apart. ACK! Rob calls the Vet emergency line. The vet said to meet him at the clinic and he would fix her up. I was worried her stuff would fall out so we tried to carry her in a blanket. That didn't work. We let her walk the rest of the way to the car and get in while I'm am walking bent over making sure she's not falling out. We get to the vet. We carry her into the table and he gives her some valium and a mask to deliver some sleeping gas of some sort. Rob holds her head keeping the mask on, and I am holding her leg so the vet can operate without tying her down. He had to cut the sides again so he could put the fresh wound together to heal better. I couldn't watch. I couldn't watch when he stapled her back together either. The vet carried her out to the car for us. Her toungue was lolling out because she was so drugged. We got home and realized we had left the front door wiiiiiide open and all the lights on in the house. Oops. I tried to let her walk around in the yard incase she had to relieve herself but she couldn't walk and kept almost hurting herself even though I was following her around everywhere so I took her in put some fresh sheets in her crate and put her to bed after we got the cone-collar on her. I only put fresh sheets in her crate because I couldn't find the blanket that she usually sleeps on. Apparently I had left it in the yard. That was the one we tried to carry her to the car in. I was such a mess that night. I didn't get any sleep either because she kept scratching at the cone trying to get it off.
Luckily everything is ok now. She will have to be on special food for dogs with kidney problems and take a pill for her kidneys every day. Now that everything is better it's kinda funny to watch her walk....or not walk... through doorways with that cone on. She keeps bumping into walls with it. What's even funnier though is watching her joyfully bounce around the front yard in it. That is a sight, let me tell ya. | | |
| I took Cricket into the vet a few days ago. She skinny (emaciated really), won't eat, walks like it's painful, and has started shaking sometimes. He told me that my dog was 5 or 6 years old, has arthritis, hip displaysia, and needed x-rays to see what was wrong. A year ago I got her from the humane society and they told me she was only a year old. That's beside the point though. The x-rays didn't show anything, so he gave her a bip or pip or something to track through her Gastrointestinal system. He held her for 24 hours and this morning we picked her up. The bip/pip, whatever, thing didn't come out. There is a blockage somewhere in her system. We brought her back after spending an hour with her so they could hook her up to an IV to try to get her apetite back. They are going to keep her there until Monday when they do the surgery to find out what's wrong. It's awful!!! I'm worried sick that my dog is going to die and paying the vet bills that I don't have the money for because there is nothing else I can do. I can't not get her surgery. I'm way too attached to do anything else. The problem is, they still might not find anything even after they do the surgery, then what? What if she has a chronic condition and needs medication for the rest of her life. Can I afford that? And it's not like there is someone else out there that will pay to keep a dog that someone else loves healthy. There's also not anyone that wants to take in a sickly older dog with severe health problems, no one I know of anyway. I'm so upset about it that I can't focus on anything else that really needs to be done, like research, and homework. This is not good. Every couple hours I just start bawling again. At least Penny is ok, a little obnoxious, but healthy. Rob talked about getting another dog if "Saint" Cricket died. That just made me cry even more. She's such a good dog. She obeys, she's house trained, she doesn't have to be on a leash if we're outside on a walk, she looks back if she gets ahead a ways and waits for us to catch up, she snuggles, plays, follows me around the house, let's Penny play bite her and pull on her ears and doesn't seem to mind. I am a total mess right now. | | |
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