Inane Chatter

I should stop telling people when Roxy is doing well.  That only lasted about two weeks.  Around the middle of last week, she started to slide back into her lethargic wobbly Roxy personality, and by the weekend, she was having accidents in the house every few hours.  She was really thirsty, so she’d drink a ton, and then she wouldn’t tell us she needed to go out.  Annoying and worrying.  We called the vet – turns out the thirst (and subsequent constant peeing) is a side effect of the wonder drug she started three weeks ago.  But that led us to another question: if this is just a side effect, why didn’t it start three weeks ago, when she started that drug?  So tonight I called the vet again and asked if there’s any way we can tell if she has an infection or if this is just a side effect.  They wanted a sample (of course), so I chased after Roxy with an old flat tupperware container and raced the sample out to the vet this afternoon.

They just called with the results.  Good news: no infection.  Bad news: there’s glucose in her urine, which is a sign of diabetes.  We have an appointment Saturday morning now to have bloodwork done to see if she really has diabetes on top of her liver issues (hepatocutaneous syndrome is what’s going on with her paws – all related to the liver) on top of her epilepsy.  If she has diabetes, we’ll have to give her insulin injections twice a day on top of all her other medicine.  That’s going to be tough.  Of course, the vet said that when there are other diseases involved, dogs often become insulin-resistant.  I don’t know what happens then.  I’ll know more on Saturday.

Silly dog #1 has hurt himself.  John thinks he may have just landed wrong when he jumped off the couch (guiltily, I’m sure).  We’ll give him a day of rest and see how he feels tomorrow night.  He doesn’t react when I mess around with the paw he’s favoring, so maybe it’s minor and will wear off.  I hope.

Silly dog #1 had an eventful evening.  He chased a giant bumblebee around the yard, caught it in the grass, pawed it to death, and then rolled around on it.  His version of a victory lap, I guess.  Then he came in, wolfed down his dinner, and threw it right back up.  Now he’s resting.  Ridiculous animal.

Hi.  Remember me?  How’ve you been?  Roxy’s doing a TON better.  We took her to the dermatologist for a follow-up almost two weeks ago, and they did a biopsy on her paw.  We’re still waiting on the results, but because she had a couple of stitches, they gave us some pain medication for her.  Within one or two doses, all of a sudden we had our Roxy back.  She’s bright-eyed, her ears perk up, she pulls on her leash when we go for walks, she begs for food when we eat at the coffee table, she tries to steal my peanut butter toast in the mornings, she runs off the deck first thing every day, she meets us at the door when we come home – this is our dog.  Does this mean she’s been in pain all this time?  What kind of pain and where?  The vets have checked her out and haven’t found anything that seems to bother her.  If we keep her on pain medication, are we actually helping her or masking the problem?  We’re taking her back to have the stitches remove next week, so I’ll be asking those questions, and we should have the results of the biopsy Monday or Tuesday.