The Dog Post

Let me first say, that the dogs are so great with Elle. Well, Big M is great, my Old Lady doesn't really care, which is about how she felt about Ali too.

Big M & Elle

It's taken me a while to finish this post because I can't do it without crying.

My Old Lady is failing. She's almost 12 and last week I took her to the vet because she hasn't been 'right' for a few months now. The vet thinks she either has dementia or a brain tumor, but we won't know which unless we do a CAT scan or MRI. I don't know if we're going to be able to do that though. She wanders around the house lost. Really, I think she's lost. She runs into things and frequently when she 'finds' my husband or I, she stands right behind our legs like she's trying not to lose us again. She stands in the corner of a room and grunts at the wall. I think she doesn't know how the wall got there, or how to get around it. We had her vision checked and there's nothing wrong with her sight. She also has extreme degenerative arthritis in her spine and her back legs are not responding the way she thinks they should. She falls over if she turns around too quickly. She can't stand on one leg to scratch anymore. She's having trouble squatting to go to the bathroom. She tries to get on the couch and misses, and falls backwards. She will pace around and around a room not knowing where to sit because sitting hurts, getting up hurts, she doesn't actually 'sit' anymore, she just makes it part way down and then falls. It hurts my heart to watch her struggle. The new pain meds we got aren't helping even though we just doubled the dose (per the vet). I don't know what's going to happen next or what else we can do for her.

Also, we had a lump removed from Big M last week. We've had half a dozen or more similar looking lumps removed from both dogs over the years. They're boxers. They get lumps. They've all been benign or at worst stage 1 mast cell and easily removed. This lump came back different. It was diagnosed as an apocrine ductular adenocarcinoma. Apparently these are not typically malignant but when they are, it can be very aggressive. Guess which one we have. We will meet with the oncologist today to start chemo on him. First we have to do some x-rays though to make sure there are no other tumors. That part scares me the most. I'm terrified they'll find more.

And, Ali, has been sick the last two weeks. I spent Monday and Tuesday night last week going back and forth between the girls rooms tending to which ever one was crying at the time. My husband has had it twice and Elle's nose has started running and she has a small cough too. So, needless to say, lack of sleep hasn't helped me in the coping department in trying to plan and deal with both dogs being sick at the same time. Honestly, I've had to not think about Big M. He's the only one with no visual, obvious issues and I can pretend there's nothing wrong, for now.

Mostly I know it's sleep issues that is making it so overwhelming. I don't want to vent on facebook because I can't deal with those who aren't going to understand how badly it hurts to see my first baby slide out of my life while I try to fix my Big M and keep everyone else in the house healthy, happy and at the very least, fed regularly.