So much to be happy about -- but I'm sad this week.
I did have a nice loss this week. I was 108.4kg (239 lb) this morning,
so it's nice to be out of the 240s. That's a loss of .8kg (1.8 lb) this
week and a total loss of 7.6kg (16.8 lb) since the start of the year.
That's certainly good news.
We're also happy to be moving along
on the house purchase, having met with the broker and filled out a ton
of paperwork. The building and pest inspection is done and there are no
major problems to be concerned with. It looks like we'll be signing
the contracts early next week. Hooray!
But there's been bad news
with our beloved Jack Russell. You may recall back in December I
mentioned she was vomiting in the middle of the night, and they took
x-rays and did blood tests but couldn't find the problem. It seemed to
go away for a while, but recently she's been vomiting small amounts here
and there (mostly liquid this time, though) and not just in the middle
of the night. She's not been eating much at all and has lost quite a
bit of weight so we got worried. We took her to the vet again Wednesday
morning and they ran some more tests saying we'd get the results the
next day. She happily ran home from the vet, though, and her energy
seemed better. But on Thursday they said it looked like it could be
kidney disease, for which there's not much they can do. We were
devastated and watched her very quickly deteriorate after that.
They
asked us to bring in a urine sample Friday morning to confirm the
diagnosis. When my husband came in with it Friday he spoke to the owner
of the clinic, an older vet with more experience, and my husband
started discussing it with him. If it's kidney failure, she would be
drinking heaps of water and peeing a lot. But she's not! The vet
studied her blood work, not only recent but the stuff from back in
December to compare it to. He thought it might be something called
Addison's disease, which can also be fatal but is treatable. We could
do more tests to confirm, but because she was deteriorating so fast and
we didn't know if she'd last the weekend, he sent home some pills to
try. Just two - one for Friday night and the other for Saturday
morning. He said if that's what it was we'd notice a big difference by
morning.
Since Thursday night she could barely walk without
wobbling around like a drunk, kept her tail between her legs, and
wouldn't eat anything, though she did drink a little bit. About 20
minutes after he gave her the first pill on Friday she perked up, got up
and walked around a bit (with minimal wobbling) and wagged her tail a
lot. We were cautiously optimistic, not wanting to get our hopes up too
high. He was supposed to give the pills 12 hours apart so he woke up
just after 5am and gave her the other pill. After she took it she
wandered over by her dish and then the garbage can, sniffing around for
something. Thinking she might want food, he got out some cooked chicken
from the fridge and she scarfed it, tearing bits of it out of his hand.
It was so exciting to see her eat again! He did say the meds could
make her want to eat, so we still didn't want to get too excited, but at
the same time if it was her kidneys the pills shouldn't have made any
difference at all.
She didn't want to eat earlier today, even the
chicken and sardines he offered her. But she did come outside with us
for a while, moved her bowels, and ran around the back yard a bit. You
can't imagine our faces when we saw her run! We were ever so hopeful
that this was the problem, it was Addison's and we could treat her! But
about 11:30 this morning the vet called, having heard back from the
specialist he'd consulted, and the specialist thought it possible she
had a stomach tumour. In any case, the vet asked us to stop in and pick
up more of the pills to get her through the weekend, and we can run
more tests next week.
So we don't know what to think now - it's
possible they can operate on a stomach tumour but she's nearly 12 years
old now, and in her weakened state do we want to put her through that?
It's so hard to say -- we don't want to keep her going just for us if
it's really her time to leave us, but at the same time if it is
something that's treatable we don't want to give up on her. We just
love her so much. Of course our other dog is terribly jealous of all
the attention she's been getting, so we're careful to give him some of
the special foods as well.
We want so much to be excited about
our new house now, but hubby just gets depressed thinking she's not
going to ever see it. I just keep thinking positive thoughts. We can
only love her while we have her. I keep telling him to BE with her now,
while he can. Love her and cuddle her and focus on positive energy as
much as possible. We may have a difficult decision to make next week,
but this weekend is all about loving her. So that's what I'm going to
do.