I think I am going to do categories this week. Here we go.
Self Reliance Group: We had our first meeting on Sunday
evening and it went great! I can tell that this program is truly inspired. We
have a really fun group of people. They were all so enthusiastic and they had
such thoughtful / insightful comments. I was kind of nervous about the first
meeting but now I’m just looking forward to our next meeting. I read through
the material for the next session and there is a lot of great stuff in there.
Snickers: We had to take him to the vet on Saturday, Monday,
and Wednesday for more laser treatments. We’ve been giving him the antibiotic
every day and putting warm compresses on the infected incision 3 times a day
(or trying to, anyway—I’ve missed a few times).
On Wednesday he also had the
stitches removed from all of his incisions. When Frank took him in last Friday,
they did a culture to see what kind of bacteria was in the infected incision.
When I took him back on Wednesday they had just received the results and it
turns out that it is a very vicious strain of bacteria that is resistant to
antibiotics, including the one that he was taking. So they gave him a new
antibiotic and told me to give him that one instead. He has to take that
antibiotic for 10 days and we are supposed to continue with the warm compresses
until the incision looks totally closed. He doesn’t have to go back to the vet
for that anymore, though, unless it gets worse. They gave him the last laser
treatment on Wednesday when I was there with him and when they do that, they
put little protective goggles over his eyes. He looked so cute in those goggles
that I had to get a picture!
Thursday morning
Snickers threw up all of his breakfast (outside, thankfully). I suspect it is
the new antibiotic. Later that day the vet called to see how he was doing and
she also had the results of his liver biopsy and the analysis of his bladder
stone. She said the new antibiotic was probably making his stomach upset, so we
have to keep an eye on that. He had the second dose last night and seemed fine.
I did hear him heaving a bit in his crate this morning but he kept his
breakfast down today so hopefully he will continue to be okay. Anyway, the
results of the biopsy were mostly good—he does not have liver cancer, at least!
There is something wrong with his liver—I can’t remember the name of the
problem now, the vet just rattled off this big long name. They aren’t sure what
has caused the problem yet because it could be many things. The good news is
that it is probably treatable. For now, the vet wants to put him on some
medicine long term that supports liver function, and we will go from there. The
bladder stone is a kind that is kind of bad because it won’t dissolve and most
dogs who get one will get more in the future. Oh, joy! It can be somewhat
controlled by diet, though, so they are working up a plan for what he can eat
and they’ll get back to us on that. He will probably have to eat a special dog
food for the rest of his life and I’m guessing it won’t be cheap. It would be
nice to avoid more surgeries in the future, though. Overall, Snickers is
feeling much better and acting like himself again which means he is back to
being hyper and barking at everything that moves. I didn’t miss the barking,
but it is good to see him feeling better again.
General Conference: I went to the Women’s Broadcast on
Saturday evening, and it was AWESOME. It’s always awesome. Our stake always has
a gathering time beforehand with lots of yummy snacks. One of my visiting
teachers offered to pick me up and go to that together, so that’s what I did.
I’m looking forward to more General Conference this weekend!
Cub Scouts: We had den meetings this week. On Monday I was
getting ready for that, which involved a trip to the library and also to the
store. I only have one boy right now so it is pretty calm and I enjoy that. I’m
working with him to finish up all the things he needs to get his Bear badge. He
is almost done. I will get another boy in November and a third one in December
but the one boy I have now will be moving into Webelos in January.
Things that don’t fit into a category: I wasn’t feeling
really great earlier this week (slight sore throat and runny nose) so I tried
to slow down a bit. That wasn’t easy to do since there was a lot to do
(especially for Snickers) but I must have been successful because I feel a lot
better now. Whatever it was, I managed to fight it off. One thing I ended up
doing in my efforts to slow down is skipping the religion class I usually go
to, and I really missed that. It’s really nice to have that spiritual boost in
the middle of the week. Other things that kept me busy this week were visiting
teaching on Thursday evening, working at the school library on Thursday
morning, lots of errands, crocheting (every day but Sunday), exercising (every
week day), making appointments (I finally got physical therapy set up, for
example), working on a photo scanning project (I’m trying to get all our
non-digital snapshots scanned), and reading (both to Seth and by myself). I
realized a few days ago that book chat is next week and I hadn’t even started
reading the book yet so I’ve been trying to read it as much as possible.
Thankfully, I’m enjoying it. Hopefully I’ll get it done by next week. (The book we are reading is called The House of Mirth.) Frank has
been exercising faithfully every day also and being careful what he eats and
he’s already lost about 15 pounds—good for him!!
That is all I have to report this week except that I got to
talk to Tanner for a while yesterday and he is doing well. He sounds happy.
Classes are going well and he is having fun too. He loves his roommate and his
ward. That was good to hear!
To finish up, here is a photo of the afghan I am working on, taken a couple of days ago. I've done about 9 more rows since then.
