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Pets

Hallowe’en Doggy Update

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Welp, Cassie the Corgi is not yet among the Undead. She had a pretty good time last night greeting young trick-or-treaters, though she fell asleep before the flood of kiddies subsided. This was OK: Ruby took over the job of loving up each and every kid and their parents, aunts, uncles, and friends.

Is she better? Quite a lot. She rarely coughs now, and when she does it’s very mild, a single huff or two. She’s a little livelier. She’s come out of the bathroom nest and usually parks herself near the human. The urinary incontinence is gone, the tragic look is gone. She’s gained back the weight she lost. She’s sleeping through the night, and she’s taken up barking again.

Is she well? Nope, not by a long shot. Though she’s back to her normal 21 pounds or so, she does look misshapen and strange. This can be a symptom of Cushing’s disease, which could be brought on either by the alleged tumor in her adrenal gland or simply by the prednisone she was given. If it were a side effect of the prednisone, though, you’d expect it to start clearing up by now. I wish I’d known the potential side effects were as extreme as they are; I would never have given it to her. And I do wish the vet had clued me that her cough might have been managed with over-the-counter human cough medicine. She probably has recovered from the fluconazole side effects, at least to the degree that she’s going to. And she seems to have thrown off the side effects of the doxycycline, although she’s releases a Great Flood every time she goes outside to pee. On the other hand, she drinks a lot more water than normal. She’s still weak and indolent — doesn’t want to get up and walk around the house, and most certainly can’t be taken on a doggy-walk.

Do I think she’s long for this world? Probably not. The median life span for a dog her size is 12.2 years. She’s right there. In fact, she may be older than that. Under the best of circumstances, no matter how much longer she lives, she’ll be living as an “old” dog.

I can’t afford a lot of expensive treatment for a dog. When I got Cassie, I had a job…and yes, I could afford vet bills, within reason. No longer! At this point, I certainly can’t afford the bills that already, pointlessly, indeed harmfully have run up in excess of a thousand dollars. So…no, she’s not getting surgery for the supposed tumor on her adrenal gland. I don’t have another thousand dollars (plus, plus, plus, plus….) to throw into keeping a dog alive indefinitely at the end of its normal allotted lifespan. Not that I don’t love my dog and I don’t want her to live forever. But that I think it’s as cruel to keep a sick and aged dog alive, just as it is cruel to keep a hopelessly sick and aged human alive.

And honi soit qui mal y pense.

Every time I think about this, I get angrier at the first vet, who foisted the prednisone on her, delivered a dire diagnosis based on a guess (without considering whether the symptoms in question could have been side effects of the prednisone), and then put her on a drug that damn near killed her.

This guy used to be one of the finest vets in the Valley. Then one day when I called his office, I got put on hold and serenaded with one of those endless blab-a-thon advertising tapes typical of chain veterinaries. You know: first the list of scary-sounding things that can happen to your pet and then the pitch for all the services the veterinary offers and then the hustle for this, that, and the other unnecessary extra treatment and service and then the “did you know?” insulting Q&A time-waster, yakity yakity yakity yakity…. These are typical of the veterinary chain operations, so I surmised that he must have bought into one of those.

And yeah: he’s not so young anymore. He needs to save up for retirement (no, believe it or not veterinarians do not earn all that much). So it makes sense that he’d up the amplitude and sell out to a chain that might pay him a guaranteed salary or percentage. Personally, I really dislike those chain clinics and avoid doing business with them. But this was my favorite dog doc, and it would take a lot to dislodge me from him.

But in the past I’ve not had him hustle me for unnecessary treatments, emit incorrect diagnoses whose purpose seem to be to put the animal on expensive and inappropriate medications, or try to persuade me of things that are overtly, obviously incorrect.

Whatever.

Whether Cassie will ever fully recover is doubtful. I think she’ll die of old age before that happens. Or of Cushing’s disease, assuming the diagnosis of an adrenal tumor is correct. But at least for the moment she doesn’t seem to be unduly uncomfortable.

Corgi: The Saga Continues!

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Well…this is pretty amazing. I’ll tellya…even though I hoped for SOMETHING good, I sure wouldn’t have expected this.

  • Cassie the Corgi, after about 40 hours off the UTI meds, is almost 100% back to her old doggy self. I’d put her at about 95% improved.
  • The cough is gone. As in GONE gone, not “gone under most circumstances.”
  • The UTI (urinary tract infection) cleared up within three days after I started giving her the doxycycline.
  • Within 24 hours of quitting the doxycycline, the malign side effects began to fade. And 36 hours later: unnoticeable by the human.
  • The labored breathing: absent. She’s breathing normally: no straining, no hyperventilating, no apparent pain. (Difficulty breathing is a side effect of doxycycline in dogs.)
  • The corgi bark: BACK IN BUSINESS. Never thought the sound of a yapping dog could be music to one’s ears… But yea verily: not only is she barking as usual, she is not plunging into a coughing fit every time she has a yip to yap.
  • Stoned lethargy: pretty much gone.
  • Suspected pain: well hidden, if not disappeared.
  • Interest in Life, the Universe, and All That: very close to normal.

Does she have adrenal cancer? Could be. Couldn’t we all? This is an elderly dog. When you get to be an elderly anything, you do not deny the possibility that something will carry you away. Any day now. And we are not afraid of that, because we know nothing lasts forever and that does not scare us.

That notwithstanding, one bears in mind that 50% of mysterious growths on the mammalian renal gland are benign. So: it could be nothing. If it’s “something,” then that is not surprising and because we are not surprised, we can cope.

So I have a call in to 2ndOvet — second opinion vet, the one who does not altogether buy the Valley fever theory and who said the dog needed to be treated for a urinary tract infection when 1stOvet claimed the test results said otherwise, yes the very 2ndOvet who begged to differ by remarking that the UTI lab numbers came back as high as they can get.

Virtually every drug I’ve given this dog has made the dog sick, including a drug for something that was real (i.e., the observable, testable, provable UTI). Let us recall all that I and many others have had to say about the pernicious influence of Big Pharma on the practice of medicine, and consider the fact that said influence extends to veterinary practice. And then let us consider the effect of inflicting two or three drugs on the pooch.

Of interest, isn’t it?

Begins to make Christian Science (yea verily, the faith of my — very long-lived — ancestors) look almost sane.

{sigh}

So. Cassie did not, after all, get driven to the vet’s office to be dispatched to her Maker this morning. As things stand, as of 12:28 in the afternoon of Monday, October 29, it does not appear that she will make any such journey. Indeed, it looks a great deal like she will be helping to stuff small children with candy from the neighbor’s driveway, come the day after tomorrow.

Happy (Amazing!) Hallowe’en!
y
Dia de los Muertos!

Doggy Update

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Cassie lives.

I’d put an exclamation point after that, except that she doesn’t seem very enthusiastic about that development.

When I got home from choir around 12:30, she was…uhm…ambulatory. She looked a little perkier. She’d lost the Tragic expression… Now she has the “This Is All Your Goddamn Fault” expression. No kidding: she’s giving me a Look that would curl your toes.

On the other hand, at least “All Your Fault” is better than “Go Dig My Grave.”

So…okay. She’s still alive. She’s still lethargic. But she is moving around to a degree, which is better than she was doing before. Clearly she’s not well. But she seems possibly, perhaps slightly LESS not well than she was some hours ago.

We shall see what happens as the effects of the doxycycline and the Benadryl wear off — if they wear off.

So I have to go sing at Compline this evening, and before then the dogs and I are climbing onto the bed for a little nap, since the human cannot be accused of having collected much sleep last night. Cassie will get fed again before the human exits and will NOT be dosed with any drugs. That will give us 24 hours without dope. If we’re no less miserable then than we are now, the human will take that as a moderately good sign. Then, if we live through the night, it will be interesting to see what state (if any) she’s in tomorrow morning, after 36 drug-free hours…

Thanks to everyone for your kind comments, emails, and phone calls! ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Go to Sleep, My Little Baby

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So after seeming to get better for a few days, yesterday Cassie the Corgi essentially crashed. This poor little dog is terribly sick. She’s not coughing as much, but her breathing is labored and she’s distant — “foggy” is the word for it. Yesterday for the first time she seemed less than interested in food. And she’s barely moving around. At times she appears to be in pain.

Last night I thought she might pass in her sleep, but no. Actually, I kind of hoped that would be the case. If it were me and I could lay me down to sleep and never wake up, that’s the way I’d want to go. This morning she’s still with us, just. But she’s immobile.

So, pretty clearly, tomorrow I’ll have to call the vet and arrange to have her put to sleep. If she lives that long.

Isn’t it odd how the most difficult crises invariably occur on the weekend, when there’s no way to get help? You get sick, the dog gets sick, the cat gets sick: everyplace is closed. When I called the vet’s office yesterday (Saturday morning), a recorded message told me to call one of those chain “emergency” veterinaries. Those places charge  you $1400 just to walk in the door.

And y’know…after spending $1,000 on the present crisis, I just don’t have $1,400. That’s more than my monthly income. It’s well over half of what I have to live on per month. And no, I’m not charging my dog’s demise on a credit card.

Dog, Pool

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Cassie the Corgi: still alive. Vet whose diagnosis I question thinks she has maybe another three months. Could be. She has her ups and downs…except…with each passing day she has more ups than she has downs.

She’s definitely not cured. Still coughing out of the blue…as just now: she’s just sitting there and hoff hoff. Yet before, she couldn’t bark without falling into a coughing frenzy. Now she barks, as before, constantly — and pretty much cough-free.

So I had this idea of tracking her ailment in Excel. Score symptoms on a scale of 1 (terrible) to 10 (back to normal). Observe result:

Hmmmm…. So what we have here starts on September 28 — about three weeks after this doggy ailment began, or at least after it registered as a serious problem in the human’s estimation. She’s really sick at that point and has been for awhile. About the 26th is when I take her off the fluconazole (the fungicidal Valley fever drug) that has made her very sick, indeed. By the 28th, she’s still incontinent, unable to eat, almost inert. Late in the day on the 29th, she revives. Then the next day she shows signs of a UTI…not just incontinence but blood in the urine. She has lost a lot of weight. I continue to dose her with Temaril-P, which contains prednisone; she continues incontinent. Incontinence is a side-effect of prednisone. But she starts to eat as the effects of the fluconozale wear off.

On the 4th I take her off the Temaril; on the 5th the new vet says the urinalysis shows the dog has a UTI; the original vet says the test doesn’t show anything very serious, but the new vet begs to differ, remarking that the numbers are as high as they can get. Vet 1 wants me to put her back on the drugs. I demur. She continues to cough and wheeze, but once regaining her appetite eats robustly. On the 7th I finally decide to cut back the Temaril and on the 8th have the idea of trying Benadryl. At that point she improves significantly, even attaining to a “10” a couple of times. I start the new vet’s doxycycline for the UTI on the 13th (it takes that long to get the results of the urine culture), and on the 14th she hits a “10.” She relapses on the 25th but then rebounds on the 26th. Today her condition has been mixed but never much below an “8.” That, I would suggest, is one helluva lot better than the scores of “1” that occurred on the 30th, the 3rd, and the 5th. She has a coughing spell at 4:00 this morning, but otherwise has been at the 8 to 10 level all day.

So…what? She seems to be trending better despite an occasional backslide. But does that mean anything? If it does, what does it mean?

Well, I guess all this comes under the heading of “we shall see.”

Meanwhile, pool guys have been in and out all week. They spent a full day jackhammering off the plaster. And the better part of half another day cleaning layers of calcium scale off the tiles….

A-N-N-N-N-D HOLY Shit!

Ruby just had a reverse sneeze episode while she was inhaling her doggy dinner and started choking on her food. I had to run to the kitchen (where she’s fed separately from Cassie to keep her from grabbing Cassie’s food) and for GODSAKE had to apply a Heimlich maneuver to save her little doggy life!

IS this EVER going to stop?????????

Well, she seems OK now. They’re both OK now. For the nonce.

Yes. So. The pool guys. The tiles look essentially brand new. I’m really glad I didn’t have them removed and replaced. They not only look great, of course they’re very mid-century modern. Perfect.

And to gild that lily, the guys who came in today succeeded in replacing and reviving the line that will allow me to attach Harvey the Hayward Pool Cleaner to a pipe in the wall, instead of having him occupy the skimmer inlet. This means that as leaves and flowers are blown into the pool and settle on the water’s surface, most of them will be sucked into the skimmer basket rather than falling to the bottom to be vacuumed up and inhaled into the filter. And that means the filter will stay cleaner a LOT longer and will run a LOT better.

In the course of chatting, I remarked to one of the men that I consider the pool very easy to care for. He said this will make it even easier to take care of. Most of the time, all I’ll have to do is keep the chemicals balanced.

Now that is an amazing concept.

Here’s how the giant bathtub looks at this stage:

And here’s how the not-yet-deceased damn-near-choked-to-death puppy looks just now…

Horror$! The Cost of the Weeks from Hell…

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Man! I have been so stunned by all the sh!t that has come down during the past two months from Hell — week after week after week in which every single day has brought some new nightmare — that I just completely let the budget go. There’s a limit to what I can think about, and I’ve been way past that limit for a long time.

By today, though, things have been quiet long enough for me to catch my breath and try to figure out how much this has cost. And how I’m going to pay for it.

• The cost of the vet bills alone has come to just about $1,000 since September 15.
• As of October 21 — with 10 more days to run this month! — I was $575 in the red.
• I retrieved $381 from Social Security by cutting the planned monthly transfer to Emergency Savings by about 60%; this left me a mere $228 in the red.

With 10 more days to go in October.

Yeah.

And that was extremely lucky: no large bills to repair the car after the fender-bender, thanks to Chuck’s guys wrestling and bolting the thing back into place, and because by some miracle I didn’t have to replace tires.

A thousand bucks on the dog in six weeks. Think of that!

Dare one speculate that a substantial part of that resulted from a wrong diagnosis? Well…probably not. We really don’t know whether Cassie does or does not  have Valley fever. She may. But she’s one helluva lot better than she was, that’s for sure. Not back to normal. But not stepping over Death’s threshold, either.

There’s money in savings to cover a couple hundred bucks’ worth of red ink. Just. There’s no way I can sustain even one more unplanned expense. And Christmas, obviously, is now a lost cause.

God only knows what the potentially life-threatening skin cancer diagnosis will cost me. Despite the supposed joys of Medicare and Medigap, there’s always some amount that isn’t covered. Where the cash will come from to pay those bills, I do not know. Out of investments, I expect.

One message from this: unless you still have a job in “retirement,” you can’t afford to keep a pet. So forget that. After Cassie and Ruby are both gone, there’ll be no more doggy companionship.

With any luck, I won’t live that long myself…