A Proper Update

I'm going to try to explain the last couple of weeks as best as I can. They've been rough, but today things are looking up-ish.

Two Sundays ago, I was nearly toppled over by severe abdominal pain. It was terrifying, frankly, and lasted about 12 hours, then began to taper slightly. By Monday, I wasn't a whole heck of a lot better, so I called the doc. "Go to the ER" was their conclusion. Of course, that didn't make me feel all warm and fuzzy.

So we went to ER. Long story short, the baby is fine and I have fibroids. The ER found the fibroids and I found the info online. The OB is going to take some convincing that that's what was happening, but it is. The stuff I've read describes my experience to a T, but also that doctors don't tend to know a heck of a lot about fibroids unless they specialize in them. However, I've never read anything that says ripping, surging, debilitating abdominal pain is normal during pregnancy, so her contention that it's round ligament pain made me want to yell. I know what RLP is and dammit, that was not it. (Yep, soapboxing for a moment.) Anyway, fibroids. Splendid.

It took about 5 days for the pain to go away to the point that sitting and standing weren't painful. In the meantime, Molly had a vet visit for shots and a refill on heart worm meds. She's been chunky for awhile, so I had some blood work run to see what's up (thyroid? something else?). Guess what's up. She might have Cushings disease. Maybe. Need more te$t$ to know for sure. Awesome. Although it is somewhat treatable, so better than something else, I suppose. I was sad, though. Hard to watch my darling girl grow older. That was... Thursday? Friday?

Monday morning, I found Missy scooting on the carpet. Not awesome. I threw her outside and called the vet. Had her checked out, nothing major going on, except maybe a bit of incontinence and some anal glad stuff. She was bouncy and nervous and full of obnoxious energy.

Here's Matt's synopsis from yesterday morning (I hope he doesn't mind the copy/paste, but he describes things better than I do):

We found Missy on the floor of Josh's bathroom Tuesday morning.  She was so weak she couldn't move, and was breathing very shallowly and very quickly.  She had been acting a little abnormal for a few days, and Libby said she had been tiring easy on walks for two weeks before that, but we figured she was 12 years old and that's just normal for an old dog.  She seemed fine Monday night, so Tuesday morning was a surprise.

Anyway, Libby took her into the vet Tuesday, and he drew blood and did a bunch of tests.  Her white blood cell count was very high, her red blood cell count was very low, and quite a few other parameters were way out of whack (one in fact was so high their equipment couldn't measure it -- more than ten times normal.)  All signs pointed to a serious infection of some kind, possible liver failure, possible kidney failure, possible adrenal gland failure, and a high level of toxicity in her blood.  She was in a bad way.

The vet recommended putting her in intensive care immediately, but that was prohibitively expensive, so we elected to take her home and do what we could for her.  The vet injected her with a big dose of antibiotics and some fluid (she hadn't eaten or drank all day and her mouth and tongue were dry).

Once home, we spoon fed her a jar of baby food and got her to drink a little by pouring water into the side of her mouth with a straw.  We weren't sure she was going to make it through the night.  We brought her into the bedroom, and Libby woke up every hour or so to make sure she was still breathing.

This morning we took her outside to see if she could pee, and she surprised both of us by standing up, walking a few steps, and doing her thing.  That was all she had though, because she was too weak to do anything else.  She was able to lift her head enough to drink a good bit of water out of a bowl, and we got another spoonful or two of food in her (including a crushed antibiotic pill).

This afternoon she's been able to pee one more time (again able to stand, but only just) and she's wagged her tail a few times at Libby and Josh, but otherwise lays on her blanket and doesn't do much. Still, this is more activity than she displayed last night, when she was unable to lift her head for more than a few seconds, she was unable to stand or sit up, and her tail was all but lifeless.  Libby has also been able to get more food and drink into her this afternoon, so that's a good sign.

The fact that she's slightly more active than she was yesterday and that we've been able to get her to eat and drink are encouraging signs, but she is still very weak and we are not yet out of the woods.

And here's Matt's synopsis of last night/this morning:

Well, Missy showed a little improvement this morning.  When I got out of the shower her head was up, and after petting her for a minute, should stood up as if to walk somewhere, but then thought better of it and sat down again.  Last night Libby got her to drink a fair amount of water and eat some food, so I figured she needed to pee.  Libby helped me get her on her blanket into the hallway where I could slide her across the house towards the back door.  On the way Missy was grunting her displeasure about being dragged through the house on a blanket (the first time she has protested us moving her.)  When I got close to the back door, Missy had apparently had enough and stood up. I stopped dragging her to avoid knocking her down.  She then walked through the door, across the porch, and out on to the grass to pee. After taking a break sitting on the grass, she walked a few more steps, peed again, and then walked back towards the house.  She needed a hand getting up the steps back into the house, but otherwise did so on her own.  She was also able to remain standing for several more minutes to suck down some more water.  All that effort pretty much wore her out, so we helped her flop back on her side, where Libby was able to get more food into her, including the morning antibiotic pill crushed into some banana-flavored baby food (She LOVES the banana...)

Anyway, that was more energy and locomotion than we have seen from Missy for about two and half days now, so we are encouraged that she is slowly getting better and getting a little of her strength back. She's pretty unstable on her feet, and tires easily, but the fact that she walked more than two steps this morning is a welcome sign. Progress is slow, but it is progress none the less.

So if my Facebook and Twitter statuses are on the pathetic side, that's why. Today, there is hope, there is a bit more normal behavior, and we're praying things continue to improve. Yeah, she's old, but if this can be nursed back to normal, I'd rather do that than give up right now. As soon as she's better, we'll have to sort out Molly's Cushings disease (or whatever's making her a chunky monkey).

I felt the baby wiggle a bit last night. :)

Here is Missy's pic from this morning, sitting up a little and --dare I say?-- smiling (classic Missy).