After being sad about Lucy's state yesterday, I decided to start making it better. What were things to cease the "shut down"?, I wondered. We went through the Chic-Fil-A drive thru. Lucy picked her head up and ate some chicken nuggets. We rode around in a shopping cart, just like "old times". I bought her a new harness and a little coat at Petco. When we got back home, I put the harness on her, and made her go for a walk. She was terrified and hated it. I pulled her along, one teeny step at a time. We made it to the stop sign near our house and then returned home. What was once was a five minute walk, took over twenty. But we did it. We have practiced walking about inside, from the front door to her dog bed. We keep practicing walking. She is made to walk herself to the food bowl, where she will now eat. She can't remember any of the routes that we have practiced. But the good new is that she has ceased the shut down.
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Lucy's behavior this week has been upsetting. She has intense fear. She won’t walk, eat, drink or go to the bathroom without extensive encouragement. I took this video to show our vet at our upcoming vet visit. If you look closely, you can see her shaking, probably from fear. Shortly after taking this video, I figured out what's wrong. Lucy has gone totally blind. We rushed her back to the Eye surgeon. She has a melting ulcer in both eyes now. She has, emotionally, reacted poorly-like we all would, I suppose. We are treating both eyes, giving her the best of care. During this time we also determined that she has very low hearing and does not respond to verbal cues. We are devestated, and expect her blindness to be permanent.
Yesterday, when I returned home from work, Lucy's left eye had turned white and hazy. Today, I took her to the eye doctor. He said she had scratched it, gotten it infected and an ulcer had formed. Her steroid drops had aggravated the infection, too. She is on a new regimen to fight the infection. Dr Blair said this is a serious problem. It is weird how quickly this trouble set in. Just look at her shopping cart pictures from two days ago-things then were great. The complications regarding her eye surgery have been difficult. Today was a real downer. I'm sorry that I have so many posts regarding eyeball problems. Truth is, before we even started all of this, I hated eyeballs. I am squeamish regarding eyes and especially eye trauma. I don't like putting drops in any eyes. But I do it for my puppy. I love her. I have fought so hard to make her well. I want us to cross the finish line on all of this, give everyone involved a high five, and to just forget about eyeballs for a while. I wonder if Dr Blair, gets tired of eyeballs, too?
Lucy is doing great with her anxiety. She is a normal dog again! I will scale back the Xanax dosage soon, as her other anxiety medication, Clomicalm, starts to take full effect. The bad new is that the eye pressure is still a problem. She will have a laser treatment next Monday to reduce the pressure. Both eyes will receive a procedure that should help the fluid drain from her eyes more successfully. We were suppose to check her thyroid today, but I gave the thyroid meds too early for an accurate reading today. I told her regular vet that I need a break and we will do her blood test in a few weeks. Both dogs have enjoyed the new pig ear that I brought home. It came from Barkworthies, a local dog treat company that makes good stuff. This picture shows how wagg-ity her tail has been recently. Yeaaa!
There is a little bench by the window in the laundry room. As we leave, the pups look out and watch our departure. From the dog bed in the laundry room, Lucy can still see out the window to monitor for movement, indicating our return. When we return, sometimes Lucy is sitting quietly in her bed, watching the window carefully. Other times she has fallen asleep. The ritual of watching us leave seems to help with day time separation anxiety. Lucy's anxiety has decreased a little more. Last night, Lucy just bark a few times when we tucked her in. She was still panting, as we fell off to sleep. But didn't dig at her bed. Unfortunately, the pressure has gone up quite a bit in her right eye. We have tripled the eye pressure medication and will recheck the pressure on Monday. We are also getting her thyroid checked again on Monday, too. Molly is doing great. She often sleeps in a pool of sunshine on the laundry room bench, regardless of us being home or not. Disclaimer: I photoshopped in the daisy blooms. My daisies are pretty spent, and the dead heads just looked too depressing. See picture below:
The vet gave Lucy Clomicalm, which takes a few weeks to properly work. To bridge the gap until then, she is also taking Alprazolam (Xanax) as a secondary anti-anxiety medication. Here is a picture from the vet, and some pictures of our CVS trip for her medication. Hit the play button, in the corner of the picture to start the slideshow. Polly, the CVS lady was very nice. She gave us a dog biscuit, in addition to her pills. Everyone at the Vet's office said that Molly was Lucy's therapy dog. She definitely is that! We are taking Lucy back to the vet next week for blood work. We are going to double check that her thyroid medication is properly prescribed. If she is suffering from hyperthyroidism, that could cause her recent onset high anxiety. After telling Lucy that she didn't need to worry at night; nothing was going to happen; we broke our promise. Ray went to the emergency room at 12:30 am with a bad pain. I stayed at home, feeling guilty for not going, too, but I had a job interview the next day. At 2:00 am, he texted me and said he was worse. I left with a frantic Lucy Puppy wondering why we both had left, like bad in-laws, in the middle of the night. Ray had a bad kidney stone. As we tried to leave the hospital, the Physician saw that Ray was in so much pain, they revoked Ray's discharge and readmitted him. I went home, caught some zzzzzzs. Ray rested at the hospital for surgery with IV pain meds. A few hours later, I went to my interview, while Ray simultaneously had surgery. It was a long, long day. At the end of it, Lucy settled down after an hour of whimpering. Molly was cool headed throughout the shuffle. Some weeks just have bad nights. Maybe next week will be better! I got the job, so that is a good start.
I've noticed that Lucy has been acting differently. She seems like she has not been feeling well. I took her back to the eye doctor, and she has elevated pressure in one eye. She's back on meds for eyeball pressure. The red haze in her eyes is just a normal reaction to the incisions, which was good news. But she is back to weekly visits to the eye doctor to monitor her pressure. Also, she has developed a bad case of night separation anxiety. She has always resisted going to bed, as she does not sleep in our room with us. But her fear of going to bed seems to grow with time, instead of diminishing. Research on this issue has proven unhelpful. We may need to add some anxiety meds, but I'd like to finish some of her eye related prescriptions, first. We try not to react to her crying and digging at night, but we need to get some sleep. To keep dust down, I don't want to have my pets sleep in my bedroom. I've tried letting her go free range for a few nights. I thought that if she saw that we were fine, and her bed was in the laundry room, along with Molly, eventually she would settle down on her bed. But she wandered all night. And being up all night resulted in accidents in the house. Except for our free range experiment, we stick to a predictable routine in the evenings; we try to not coddle her when she is upset, we are good pack leaders, but she is really anxious and is disrupting everyone's sleep. I hate seeing her like this. I wish she could speak, so we could talk out what is upsetting her.
I knew Lucy hated being confined, so we practiced quite a bit with her playpen. All dog and cat owners should practice some crate training. Sooner or later they break a toe, need their teeth cleaned or have a medical reason for confinement. It is good to have crate experience before pets need medical confinement. I was happy to have Lucy's playpen objections out of the way before she came home with stitches yesterday. But the first night back from surgery was still terrible. Lucy, like all dogs, hates the E-collar. It took one entire day and night of agitation before she accepted the collar was here to stay. A great deal of effort was spent by making sure she didn't slam her head into something during her protests. I really wish we had tried some practice sessions wearing the cone. She tried overnight to head-butt the plastic collar off of her head. And I was up, too, telling her to, "Cut it out. You have stitches!" Lucy is taking a bunch of medicine for the next week or so. I have a pill organizer to help keep me straight, and to avoid the, "Did I already give you your morning pain pill?" guesswork. If I gave the the pill, it will not be in the caddy. In addition to her pills, she takes three different eye drops, on three different schedules. To keep my drop schedule straight, I put Post-Its on the fridge. There is one Post-It for each dose given during the day. The left side shows Post-Its for drops which still need to be administered. The right is where I put the Post-Its for drops that have been administered. I don't want to fiddle with learning a bunch of medication names. So the bottles are labeled 4x, 1x and 2x which correspond to the number of times that med needs to be given that day.
Lastly, For animals and peoples, when you undergo anesthesia, your gut takes a while before it gets back on track. It wakes up more slowly than other systems of the body. For the next few days, Lucy is eating meat based baby food and boiled rice while her digestive system recovers. Which she loves, too. The procedure was successful. Lucy was terribly groggy when I picked her up from her surgery. She was still sedated in the car. Once I set her down on the grass, it was a different story. |
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