One Day at a Time

Right now, everything is good. Scooter is seemingly fine...again. Do I dare start to think we are out of the woods yet? I don't know, but he seems completely normal now.
He eats normally, he runs around normally (well, as much as a 14 year old dog "runs". But he is up and around and interested in stuff again). He watched me make his dinner tonight with gleeful anticipation, tail wagging all the time, and I felt almost guilty that less than a week ago we were ready to put him down. Well, the vet was too. He was so sick and so miserable. Who knows what the future holds. We are just taking it one day at a time.

Bruce and I decided to take a little break from the mayhem around here last night. We went out to dinner (we had the endless shrimp at Red Lobster...the coconut shrimp is still the best). Then we hit all the Halloween shops in town hunting down a costume for our cruise in October. There is going to be a dinner and costume party on Halloween night, and we want costumes. Dad and Barb have already bought theirs, but they are being highly secretive as to what they are going to be. We can't have them outdo us now, can we? We saw a few things, got a few ideas, but we still have to contemplate this for a while before we commit. Do we do a couples thing? Or be individually creative? We haven't gotten all of that figured out. But I do know that there WILL be pictures, so stay tuned.

Speaking of pictures, Bruce bought us a new camera this past week. Its another one of the small digitals that I love so much. I LOVED my little Sony that was hardly bigger than a pack of cigarettes. This is an Olympus, still very small, but waterproof. We decided after our river tubing trip that we needed a waterproof camera, so....there you go. Its good up to 33 feet, and virtually indestructible.
You can drop it up to 6 feet and supposedly drive a car over it. Yeah, well, I hope to not test that one out, but it says it will withstand some serious abuse. So far the pictures have been good. But I haven't had any time to actually sit down and figure it out. Maybe I will do that tonight. In our shopping last night, we bought the cutest little Halloween costumes for the cats. Yeah, we really did...LOL. Omen is a witch, and Vixen is a little devil. They hate them passionately, of course. But I intend to get at least a couple of cute pictures out of this deal whether they like it or not. I may be sporting some deep scratches all over my body, but I need cute kitty costume pictures to ring in the fall season!!!!!

Soon

Is it fall yet? We've had some cooler weather, so maybe? Soon? But anyway, things are still semi-crazy around here. Stephen is still recovering from having his wisdom teeth out. He just isn't bouncing back as quickly as he hoped. I think he misses being able to eat real food most of all. But hopefully he will be able to eat soon....Soon seems to be a reoccurring theme lately.

My tooth is finally feeling normal again with all the antibiotics. Of course, now my stomach hurts. Those meds always make me feel like crap, but what can you do? I have the root canal scheduled for Tuesday, so again....soon....things will be better. LOL.

But the thing that has driven my the most crazy lately is Scooter. It was the dog flu. Tests and xrays and trips to the vet that showed nothing. Then he mysteriously got better. Then this past weekend, he got sick again. Just stopped eating, and was lying around feeling feverish and miserable. We got him to the vet again. More tests, more xrays....and she admitted that she had exhausted her arsenal of diagnostic tools. There was a chance that he was just having a really bad time with this flu, or....he might have liver disease or possibly liver cancer. The tests were all inconclusive. The only things that showed up were a slightly enlarged liver on the xrays, and slightly elevated liver enzymes in his blood tests. Could be disease, but not totally abnormal for a dog of this age. She gave us 3 options:

1. A trip to the Vet school in Raleigh for a full CT scan. Just the diagnostic estimate was $2,000-5,000.
2. Hit him up with a whole range of meds just to see if something might work. That would only be if it was just a bad case of flu.
3. Euthanasia. Because seriously, he was miserable.

We opted for the meds. And there are a ton of them. None of them are ultra-expensive, but we pretty much shove pills into this dog most of the day. On the upside, he is doing great, acting normal and eating again. The thing is that if he has a relapse, thats pretty much the end of the line. We will have to schedule euthanasia....because it pretty much means its something untreatable (or even unfindable). So, I haven't been able to relax and just be happy that he is better.
I keep feeling anxious that he is going to stop eating again. But...he is 14 years old, and if it comes to that, then I will deal with it.

Soon....its all going to be better. I am sure of it.

Rough Couple of Weeks....

We've had a rough couple of weeks. It started with several days of the dog flu. Then Scooter had a hard time recovering. We really weren't sure he was going to make it, but he's much better now. And now I have an abscessed tooth...yay! I haven't had any sleep in 2 nights. I am so hungry but it hurts to eat. I've called in sick 3 times in 2 weeks and will probably face a reprimanding when I go back to work next week. Its all so totally awesome.

But on the upside, its bound to get better. Right? Feel free to insert words of encouragement here:


LOL. Seriously though, its been rough but I am still hanging in there.

A million errands, and some happy thoughts....

I had a million errands to run this morning. I had meds to pick up at the vet, needed stuff from Target, needed stuff from Petsmart, had stuff to drop off at Goodwill, groceries to buy...etc. It was so hot that I wanted to die everytime I got out of my car, or walked out of a store. Geez, is this ever going to break? Actually, its cooling off as I write this because we have a huge line of thunderstorms bearing down on us right now. Its growing darker by the minute, and the wind is picking up. If it makes it cooler, than bring it on. We have nowhere else that we have to go this afternoon/evening, so we can just hang out and enjoy the rain.

So, I am really happy for Erica. She has decided to volunteer at the SPCA (humane society) up there in her town. She attended a training session this morning, and is now an official dog walker. Yay! She sounded like she really enjoyed it, and this makes her mother especially happy. The humane society is my charity of choice, so yeah. I am proud of her. She goes in 2 hours a week to walk dogs who need some attention. She also has the option to be a cat socializer, and spend some quality time playing with the cats, but she loves dogs more. Don't tell that to Vixen and Omen. Shep already knows that little secret though. Erica has wanted a dog since she moved away from home. The problem is that she stays so busy, and has very little time at home. So...maybe this will solve her dog-yearning for now. On the other hand, she is at risk of falling in love and adopting, too....LOL. I will let you know if I suddenly have a furry "grandchild" anytime soon.

Finally clean

So, I took the day off to try and get the house in order after our week of dog flu hell. I have cleaned, scrubbed, disinfected and sanitized every inch of everything that the dogs have access to. I finally feel like I can walk across my floors again without being grossed out with memories of what I just cleaned up from them. It feels good. It smells good. I am exhausted, the carpet steam cleaner is begging for mercy, but it was worth it.

Sometimes I envy all the non-pet people. People who can wear clothes without having to choose things less prone to showing pet hair (black is almost impossible for us to wear here no matter how much cleaning goes on). People who have never awakened in the middle of the night to the sound of a dog retching (and then that inevitable splatter ...shudder!). People who don't know what its like to step in a puddle of cold urine in their bare feet (or worse, socks. I don't know why socks make it worse, but they do). But then, I look down at the big dog (with the worst case of bedhead on the planet) lying here at my feet. And I feel the soft, warm body of this furry little kitty snuggled here by my side, and I know beyond any doubt that its all worth it. This is where my heart is, and if I have to deal with a little inconvenience occasionally, so be it. Pets rule!

Shep, our bedhead dog:

The Nightmare that has been my week....

I have been to hell and back this week. All of our dogs have had some really ugly stomach virus. Bruce and I have cleaned up more poop and puke than I can even begin to describe. Trust me, you wouldn't want to know the gory details. First it was Scooter. He got sick on Monday. Tuesday we left him locked in the kitchen while we were at work only because it has linoleum floors. Better than cleaning up the carpet. Lucky for me, Bruce got home first that day. Apparently, he cleaned, mopped and disinfected every inch of the kitchen because Scooter managed to "decorate" the whole entire floor. How wonderful.

Today...? Just a couple of minutes before I left for work this morning, Scarlet managed to puke up her entire breakfast all over the study. I was late for work because of all the mess I had to clean up. So, I locked BOTH of those dogs in the kitchen, just to be safe, because I didn't trust them to roam the house with all of the festivities going on. So...I was the winner of the lottery this afternoon. I got home first. The unmistakable odor assaulted me as soon as I opened our door. I immediately went to the kitchen to see what horror awaited me. But both of those dogs were sitting peacefully (and clean) there on the floor. Which left only 1 other culprit. Shep! Our HUGE dog! He hadn't shown any signs of the virus, so I left him out of the kitchen lock up. Half the time he stays outside when we are at work. Sometimes he wants to stay in. Today was an "in" day. And he NEVER has accidents in the house. Seriously, like never. But he made up for it today. I cleaned up the most horrific mess all over the floor of Stephen's room. Its been one trauma after another all week long. Tomorrow, the steam cleaner is coming out and all the carpet in the den, study and now Stephen's room will get a really deep cleaning. I mean, we cleaned up the mess, but I can't be happy until its clean enough to obliterate these events from my memory.

On the up side, the dogs seem to be recovering. Scooter still doesn't have any appetite, but he seemed to have it the worst. He is drinking plenty, and I have gotten some pedialyte, and chicken broth in him, which is finally staying down. Maybe he will get his appetite back tomorrow. We think...and we may be wrong...but we think they must have caught something when the vet came for a house call on Friday. Our vet makes house calls, and we scheduled one for all the routine shots and check ups. She brought one of her assistants, and got everything taken care of here at the house. A few days later everybody starts getting sick....? I don't know if somehow some germs got transferred, or what. But I do know that its been just awful. Hopefully the dogs will get well enough that the weekend won't involve so much poop and puke......Or....I may end up running away from home.

Moderation

I am getting really bad at blogging lately. There is no particular reason, I just haven't had anything to say. Everything is fine around here. Good even, better than just fine. I have no idea why I keep procrastinating about sitting down here and writing a blog....

One thing I did want to say is...how confusing is it to try to have a healthy diet? We tried going vegetarian for about 2 years, thinking that would help keep us healthy (Bruce has genetically high cholesterol). We ended up cutting so much fat from our diet that we both got dry skin, dry hair, and achy joints. Apparently, the body needs fat. Also, our addiction to soy most likely caused my thyroid to give up the ghost and stop working. Oh joy. Rhymes with soy. And the crappy part of that (besides the plethora of problems I have had with thyroid disease) is that I actually like soy. I love soy milk, and veggie burgers. I was happy eating soy, but not anymore. It not only suppresses thyroid function, it also blocks thyroid meds from doing their thing. I have to be really careful because soy is added to almost everything that is "low-fat". Just check out the ingredients listed on a whole string of things like bread, low-fat mayo. Soy is listed on so many products, its really hard to avoid.

After the vegetarian diet wreaked havoc with our health, we gave up and started following what our doctor recommends "everything in moderation". Well, ok, we don't follow it precisely. There are lot of things that I don't eat in moderation (like chocolate). But we still try to avoid eating high fat, high cholesterol foods. Like red meat. And eggs. Which is another one of those completely confusing diet dilemmas. We have avoided real eggs for years, using those egg beater egg white substitutes. Well, its real eggs, just without the yolks. I have never developed a taste for them, although some people claim not to be able to taste a difference. I don't mind them in baking, but scrambled? I will just eat something else, thank you.

And now....there was just an article in the new issue of Reader's Digest claiming that eggs are healthy. That eggs can raise your HDL's (the good cholesterol) more than almost any other food. That an egg a day is good for you....What the hell? Soy is good but it almost killed me. Eggs are bad, but now they are good....???????
How the heck can you know what to do with all of the conflicting information out there? I am about to throw in the towel and just assume that we are all going to die of something anyway, so I am going to eat what I like. In fact, it was late and I was tired when dinnertime came around, so I celebrated the article we had just read and made a quick, easy (and pretty yummy) dinner of scrambled eggs and toast.
With REAL eggs. And it was delicious, too. We both enjoyed it.