Snickers: You'll maybe remember that I mentioned last week that he hadn't been feeling well and that I was planning to call the vet on Monday if he didn't improve. Over the weekend he stopped eating his treats, which he normally loves, so we knew something was really up. I called the vet Monday morning but they couldn't get him in that day. (I could have asked to have him seen as an urgent care case, but I didn't realize how sick he really was then.) They had appointments the next morning and he could see the doctor that he normally sees, but I had a my appointment to get my crown so the timing didn't work for me. However, they said I could drop him off before my appointment and they would keep him there until I could pick him up after my appointment. So that's what I did. Shortly after I finished at the dentist, I got a text message from the doctor saying that his lab work was suggesting that he had developed diabetes. His blood sugar was sky high and he had blood and ketones in his urine, which meant he was actually in diabetic ketoacidosis, which is a medical emergency (as in, he probably would have died if we hadn't taken him in when we did). They did a secondary test which confirmed the diabetes. He had to stay at the vet all day, getting fluids and medications. We were able to bring him home Tuesday evening but they wanted us to bring him back the next morning for more testing and to get more fluids. Ditto for Thursday. It took those 3 days to get him stable, to get him eating a little better and able to take his medications orally (instead of in an IV) and to start to figure out what dosage of insulin he will need each day. (They are still adjusting that, but we have a starting point.) When we picked him up on Wednesday, they had us watch while they gave him an insulin shot and yesterday when we picked him up, they had us practice on a towel, and then I gave him his insulin shot for the evening. He has to have 2 shots each day, approximately 12 hours apart, so I gave him another shot this morning and Frank gave him his shot this evening. He is starting to act a little more like himself, although he's still tired and he still doesn't have much of an appetite. Right now he is getting spoiled rotten because we are supposed to be trying to entice him to eat, so he is getting things like chicken, steak, pork, and ham. He has to eat or he can't get his insulin, and besides that he has lost about 3 pounds, which is a lot when you only weigh about 12 pounds in the first place! He has 3 different pills he has to take right now and that is a real pain because he doesn't want to take them. He used to gobble up pills as long as they were wrapped in cheese but now he is spitting them back out. It's been a real ordeal!
Added to the stress of worrying about the dog and realizing that we now have a dog who needs special care on a daily basis, we have been really anxious about the fact that we are leaving next week and we need someone to take care of him while we're gone. We've already been struggling to find someone to watch him, and now we need to find someone who's willing to give him shots twice a day as well? And give him 2 or 3 different medications, which he doesn't want to take? What are the chances? And will he stabilize before we need to leave, or will he still be in a crisis situation? It's been awful worrying about all those things. The first day I took him to the vet and we found out all the problems, I told her that we needed to be at our son's wedding on the other side of the country next week and we didn't know who we could get to give him shots and everything. She said that a number of the people who worked with her do pet sitting and that one of them could probably watch him, so she would start putting the word out. Frank also talked to someone at his office who has a daughter studying to be a vet and she thought her daughter would be willing to watch him. We actually had that worked out, but then this morning she changed her mind. Thankfully, when I took Snickers in to the vet this morning (he just had to have his blood sugar checked this time, he didn't have to stay) the technician that saw him said that she could watch him. So we have that worked out now and that's a relief (although I'm still worrying that something is going to come up!) Tomorrow I have to take in a urine sample for them to test and we will probably have to take him in on Monday or Tuesday to get his blood sugar tested again. Everybody please pray that he will keep improving and that he'll start eating better and that we'll be able to get him to take his pills. I admit that I am still feeling pretty overwhelmed by this whole situation. As you can probably imagine, this has also been a huge financial burden and I am honestly scared about what else could be coming in the future. It's just been one problem after another with him lately and every time something goes wrong it costs us hundreds (or in this week's case, thousands) of dollars. He now has diabetes, a liver condition, a history of bladder stones, and a herniated disc. I just feel like he is a time bomb waiting to go off, with more problems, and I don't think we can do this much longer. (Yesterday we noticed he is walking kind of funny and holding one of his legs at a weird angle, which means his herniated disc may be acting up again. Or something new, who knows?) It's just been a lot to deal with, on a lot of different levels.
Snickers on Tuesday evening--totally worn out and feeling pretty rotten.
Snickers last night--feeling a little better, but still pretty tired.
Well, we did do a few other things this past week although all the trips to the vet and the phone calls and trying to get Snickers to eat every few hours, and giving him shots and medicine and all the discussions about what can we do have taken up a lot of time.
Wedding Stuff: Wedding stuff has also been stressful. The dress I ordered for Tanner's wedding came and it really didn't fit well. I mean, I could make it work in a pinch but I'd be uncomfortable all day and having to constantly tweak it here and there, which I really don't want to do. So this week whenever I got a chance in between all the craziness, I shopped--either online or at local stores. And I couldn't find anything!! If it was modest enough and they had my size, it wasn't the right color (I even have 4 or 5 colors to choose from, and I couldn't find anything any of those colors!) I finally found a couple of good options online--right color, right size, modest--but none of them would get here in time. I finally found a dress one of the right colors online that will be arriving on Sunday; I'm just praying that this one fits! If it doesn't, I don't know what I'll do. Seth's pants arrived this week and they don't fit either! So I ordered another pair that came today and hopefully they will fit (I haven't had a chance to get him to try them on yet.) Frank ordered a tie which also arrived today and which he needs to try on to make sure it will work. Besides trying to find wedding clothes, I also had to get the final count for the luncheon by today so I spent some time trying to get in touch with people about that (including contacting Darlee and her mom to get numbers from them) but I finally got that figured out this morning so that's one less thing I have to do now.
Dentist fun: I already mentioned that I got a crown on one of my teeth on Tuesday morning. It wasn't too bad, really. My mouth kind of ached on Tuesday but it feels better now. The crown is actually temporary--the real crown will not come in for a few weeks, which means I won't have the real one put on until after I get back from Utah. The tooth with the crown is still feeling kind of sensitive--I don't like chewing hard things with it and it sometimes hurts a little when I drink ice water. It has been getting a little better every day though.
Seth was supposed to go to the orthodontist yesterday, but they called that morning to reschedule because the orthodontist's mother had passed away yesterday morning. I'm sorry for the orthodontist, of course, but I was kind of relieved to have one less thing to do, with all the sick dog drama going on. Plus Seth still has teeth that need to come out, and now we have another 6+ weeks in which to wiggle them and hope they all come out of their own accord so he doesn't have to have them pulled out. Fingers crossed!
Cats: We have been watching some cats this week for the carpool family, who have been out of town. We go every other day to let them in the house in the morning and let them out of the house at night. We had a really huge rainstorm in the early hours of Monday morning (over 6 inches in a few hours!) and when we went over to let the cats in, one of them came running up as soon as she saw us opening the front door and had her paws on the door, trying to push her way in before we could even unlock it! That was kind of funny. I ended up going over again that day to check for flooding in the basement because they had heard about the rain and sometimes their basement floods when it rains hard. There was a little bit of water in one room, but not much at all thankfully. The rest of the week both cats have been a bit elusive and we've had to chase them out from under beds with a broom to get them to go out at nights. Not too fun. But tomorrow morning is the last time we have to go over.
Celebrations: Now for some fun stuff. We had a great time with the Hatches on Friday evening. We had a yummy dinner and all the kids went swimming. They had a few fireworks they set off, but their neighbors set off fireworks too and it was fantastic! An even better show than the city of Frederick does every year. And we had front row seats with no crowds! So that was awesome. They also made brownies and put a candle in them and everyone sang Happy Birthday to me, so that was nice. On Saturday evening Jared and Jessie came over to share my birthday cheesecake and we played games too.
And everything else: We went to a baptism on Saturday for an 8 year old girl in our ward (we're pretty good friends with her family). I filled out a bunch of paperwork for Scout camp for Seth. I wrote the monthly music spotlight for our ward newsletter (part of my job as ward music chair). I taught Primary on Sunday (we only had 4 of our 9 kids...it's definitely summer) and prepared this week's lesson. I found substitutes to cover the 2 Sundays that I will be gone. I went to the religion class. I exercised most days and Seth and I did chores and brain balance every day. Frank mowed the lawn for me on Tuesday. Our RS had their monthly meeting that evening too, but I missed it because we were picking up Snickers from the vet. That's it!
To finish up, here's the pictures from my birthday that I promised last week to include in this week's post:
When we got back from the Hatches, I had to get on my computer for something, and I noticed Google looked like this:
(And when I scrolled over the Google logo, the "Happy Birthday, Annette!" greeting appeared.) Not sure how Google knew it was my birthday--it must be in my account profile or something like that. Kind of creepy, though! Big brother is watching you!!
Here's a bonus photo from Tanner & Darlee's openhouse, because the girl who took the photos for us also sent them to us on my birthday:
And here's a few from Jared & Jessie's reception that Frank took with his drone (they all look a little blurry and distorted on the blog, for some reason. They don't look that way in my computer files):
Pretty cool, right?
Now it's super late and I have a lot to do tomorrow so good night!
No comments:
Post a Comment