Dear Humans,
Mom said she can’t concentrate on anything today, anyhow, so I might as well have laptop privileges. Although I’m not functioning very well, so have had to resort to dictating to my stinky brother.
(Iris says I’m not allowed to call him my stinky brother any more, or she’ll take him to come and live with her – I say that’s not much of a threat, Iris, BRING IT!! I could really use that extra space on the bed, once I’m able to get up there again.)
Mom sucks as a secretary right now, because she just keeps crying, and feeling my chest, and feeding me medicine, and crying.
My friends, there is no polite way to say this. I feel like a can of smashed assholes. I’ve been able to wag my fwappity fwappity tail, but that’s about all I have the energy for right now.
My belly is bloated to a gazillion times its normal size, and I’ve somehow managed to gain 4 kilos since my last weigh-in – all water (yes, really). But the worst part is that my red blood cell count is half its normal value, and that’s what’s making everyone scared. There are signs that my body is producing red blood cells just fine, it’s just that nobody is sure where they’re all going. There’s no blood in the fluid in my belly. There’s no blood in my poop. There was no blood when I threw up in the bedroom, or in the car, or in the exam room, or that other time in the exam room. A mystery wrapped in an enigma and tied up with donkey balls.
I’m probably getting ahead of myself. I’m not great at reading (though I devoured many magazines in my puppyhood), but I don’t think Mom has properly conveyed all that has happened in the last few days.
Since my biopsy, I’ve gotten cold really easily, and have only been on short walks – although I’ve played indoors with my friends at Ruff Haus a lot, since the staples came out. And I've been obsessed, Ob-SESSED with eating snow (the clean kind). Mom’s had to lift me into the car after Ruff Haus, but that was happening sometimes before the biopsy, because I’m getting old (she says) and sometimes overdo it. But in the last couple of weeks, I haven’t really been able to jump onto the bed, either, even on the days when I'm not playing my cute little arse off.
Earlier last week, Mom noticed I was getting a bit of a pot belly, but that’s a common side-effect with the prednisone I’m on. Rachel at Ruff Haus commented on it as well on Thursday, so Mom took some photos and sent them to the vet, just to be safe, but they agreed it was just the prednisone.
My friends, it was not just the prednisone.
Over the weekend, the pot belly became a pot belly with two kegs on the side. Mom was ready to call the vet Monday morning and start getting me weaned off the steroids, because it was getting ridiculous. But I had other plans… (dun Dun DUN)
We had a nice walk Sunday afternoon, but I was super-cold when we got home. Mom went to visit with some of the neighbours, but when she came back, I was still shivering, so she turned up the heat and put on the fire. I ate my dinner just fine, because… DUH. But then I started grumbling and whining when I lay down, which got Mom concerned, because I didn’t whine through any of my surgery recovery, and I had a gazillion staples in my damned belly.
I went to hide in the bedroom for a while, because I feel safe there (I also like hiding under the dining table, but even that isn't as safe as the bedroom). Mom came looking for me and said I was acting weird (rude). She tried to get my heart rate, but I was having none of that, and instead decided to throw up all my dinner beside the bed.
Don’t worry, I cleaned it up, like I always do.
Then I wanted to go outside, so she let me out. But then I was super-freezing and holding my paws up, so she called me to come back inside, but I was all confused and didn’t want to, so just sat in the snow, whining and shivering, until she brought out the reinforcements (super-stinky treats!), and tried some reverse psychology – she told me to wait, wait, wait, wait, and then yelled “okay!”, and I forgot I had already been waiting of my own accord, so followed her and the treats inside. (Mom’s sneaky!)
She checked my heartrate and didn’t even bother waiting until the minute was over, because she said it was like a hummingbird, and she couldn’t count that fast when her brain was exploding (drama queen much?). My breathing was also weird, probably because of so much pressure on all my internal organs, so she said fuck sleep, we’re going to emerg. (Did I mention it was almost 2am by this point? Yeah, she had to put her pants back on. Or at least she said she did. I don’t understand this obsession with pants, myself.)
Stinky brother (take him, Iris, TAKE HIM!) got sent to the bedroom so he wouldn’t bug the cats, and Mom and I went to the garage. She didn’t even try to get me in the back where Jasper and I usually ride – she opened the side door, and I was (barely) able to get onto the floor of the back seat by myself, and then up on the seat.
Remember how I cleaned up the barf? Well, as Mom was turning on to Dunlop Street, it all came out again. All over the back seat. (Might wanna wait until it’s fumigated before sitting back there, just sayin’…)
We got to the hospital and called to announce our arrival – the website had been saying it could be up to 4 hours wait if I was stable, so Mom was prepared to spend all her carbon offsets on keeping me warm in the parking lot. But they let us in right away. And guess who greeted me? Rachel from Ruff Haus, who moonlights at the hospital. I was really happy to see her, even if she thought I looked like absolute crap (not her words, she’s far too kind to say things like that).
Rachel brought me in to triage, and one of the vet techs took all my vitals and history. She looked a little perplexed at my heart rate. Apparently people have something against hummingbirds? I guess I aced the triage test, though, because the emergency vet showed up pretty quickly. He said the pressure was on, because everybody loved me and he had to make me feel better. Mom said damned straight, fix my girl!
I threw up in the exam room. And then threw up again. Just in case anyone had missed it the first time. (They hadn’t.)
So they took me away to get another blood workup, and an ultrasound, and to stuff a needle into my belly to get a sample of what was filling it up so much.
After all the tests were completed, the doctor came back and looked really serious. He said he’d give the good news first – WHICH IS NOT A GOOD BIT OF NEWS IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING WORSE IS ABOUT TO HIT YOU OVER THE HEAD. The good news was that my liver values hadn’t gotten any worse. And he didn’t think I was having a bad reaction to prednisone – which is good, because it’s trying to save my liver. In fact, this was probably completely independent of the prednisone, other than I had a pretty high white blood count, which was to be expected from it. Also all the liquid in my belly was pretty much 100% water, no blood or ammonia or anything toxic. But my red blood count was craptastic. And that was scary, because I was really anaemic.
(You all might not have known her back then, but Mom was very anaemic and apparently could have died about a decade ago, so I’m pretty sure this is her fault. All that intergenerational stuff she’s studying right now, amIrite?!? She’s still here, though, and so am I, so maybe I inherited her stubborn streak, along with her predilection for functioning without red blood cells? Let’s hope.)
Mom got grilled on my poop for a while, but she couldn’t remember seeing anything different with it recently (and she’d had to pick up 3 bags of it on our walk earlier). There was no blood in my belly fluid. There was no blood in the barf I’d helpfully displayed earlier. Everyone was flummoxed.
The vet asked if Mom would be willing to drive me to the hospital in Toronto, to see a specialist, and she said yes, for sure, so the doctor made a couple of calls. But Toronto didn’t want me if I was stable, which I was, and said that I should wait for a referral from my normal vet. The doctor said he could call around for other possibilities, but it might make more sense to work with the internal specialist who’d already seen me. Mom said if I wasn’t critical right now, that might make more sense. The vet said it was critical, but not imminently critical. This did not make Mom feel happy. In case you haven’t noticed, she’s a catastrophizer at the best of times. And this is not the best of times.
So he gave me a shot of something, I don’t even remember what, and sent me home with a bunch of medicine and a prescription for mom to fill at the pharmacy for diuretics.
Mom almost lost consciousness on our way out the door, when she talked to the nice woman with the credit card machine. She said something about how gold-plating me would probably be cheaper and keep me around longer, and how I'd better star in a commercial soon, and keep her in the style to which she should be accustomed. Whiner. I'm worth it, she even said so.
So mom started me on my morning dose when we got home (about 6am), although I was decidedly NOT interested in the cheese the pill was wrapped in (but ate the pill, so whatevs), and the shit in the syringe got squirted in places that weren’t all inside my mouth – hopefully she refines her technique over the next little while. Then she cancelled all her appointments for today, then tried to go to sleep. But all she could do was sob big snotty sobs and say she wasn’t ready for another broken heart (apparently she’s had her heart break at the Emergency Vet before), and that she’d let me eat bunny poop and kiss her every day if I’d just pull through. I will remind her of this.
She did manage a couple of hours of sleep, though, because she woke up saying “oh shit”, because Michelle was coming to take Jasper for a romp in the woods without me, and she didn’t have time to feed him first. So, haha, stinky brother had to wait for his breakfast!
While he was gone, I got half a breakfast, to make sure it stayed down. When Jasper got back from HAVING FUN WITHOUT ME, he got his breakfast and I got another half breakfast. Which stayed down too.
I’ve been outside a few times, but mostly am lying down on the dining room carpet, in a nice coat that Iris brought me. I was happy when she came to visit a second time to keep an eye on me while Mom went to the pharmacy, but the pharmacist said they couldn’t fulfill the prescription as written, because the pills don’t come in that small a dose. So Mom and Iris went online to see if there was any food stuff that could act as a natural diuretic in the meantime. And there’s LOTS of fruits and vegetables that are available in spring and summer, but not a whole heck of a lot of natural diuretics currently in the fridge. But carrots were mentioned somewhere, so mom shredded some carrots and stirred them into pumpkin, and then she and Iris talked about jello salad in the 70s and made lots of icky faces about aspics. I’d make icky faces at ass picks too – I did NOT like having my temperature taken last night, I tell you!
So I’m still waiting for my diuretics to get rid of some of this damned water. But I’m taking my new meds that are supposed to stop gastrointestinal bleeding (since that’s what the vet said was most likely causing my lack of red blood cells), and keeping up with my prednisone, since that doesn’t seem to be the problem. (The vet said it was keeping me alive, and that you can’t go cold-turkey off prednisone, anyhow, without causing all sorts of other problems.) I’m not whining or moaning today, but am just really freaking tired and not up to doing much. Plus every time I start to relax, Mom jumps in to make sure I’m still breathing, which is super-annoying.
I think I’m going to go make Mom eat something, since it’s been well over 24 hours since she’s ingested anything but water or coffee. She says she’s too anxious and will just throw it up again, but I’m here for clean-up duty, as always. I aim to please.
So please keep sending good thoughts, and maybe send facial tissue for Mom, because she’s a bit of a disaster right now. I promise to keep you posted. I’m going to make her re-watch last week’s episode of Grey’s to cheer her up – that’ll work, right…?
Love and schlurps and my fwappity tail,
Macie
