Man Down

Our family is functioning a little differently right now.  We have a man down . . . well actually a dog down.  Our poor Peachy-Pooch is in the hospital right now fighting toxicity.

The sickness started on Saturday night when Peaches threw up her dinner with little to no warning or signals.  She's a dog and she eats strange things sometimes, so Len and I didn't think much of it.  She's done that before.  But when she woke us up in the middle of the night and early Sunday morning still throwing up, we began to wonder what she had gotten into.

On Sunday we continued to push as much liquids as we could on the dog, but nothing stayed down.  She began to be shaky and trembling a lot.  We assumed she was weak and mildly dehydrated, so just kept hoping she'd get whatever it was out of her system and start keeping something down.  No luck all day Sunday.  We also noticed that her eyes were twitchy and moving back and forth a lot.  It didn't seem like a seizure because she was still responsive and able to walk and move around.  We again chalked it up to her being dehydrated.

Sunday night we debated over whether or not to take her to an emergency care clinic, but finally decided we'd just wait till Monday morning and take her during normal office hours.  (We were trying to avoid some expensive medical bills, if possible.  Ha-Ha!  Little did we know!)

Monday morning, Len stayed home from work so I could take the dog to the vet without dragging the kids with me.  I walked into the vet clinic closest to our house at exactly 8:03 just after they had opened.  I explained that I wasn't a normal client but our dog was really sick and probably dehydrated.  Without looking at us much, the nurse began to explain how they didn't take walk-ins during clinic hours.  She started giving me directions to a different vet hospital just down the road, when she looked down at Peaches and noticed her shaking.  She bent down and looked at her twitching eyes, and the look on her face completely changed.  She asked rather quickly, "Is she (the dog) friendly?"  As soon as I replied yes, the nurse scooped Peaches up into her arms and ran with her to the back medical room.  I stood there kind of speechless, not sure what had just happened.  Then the nurse came running back with a different piece of paper that had written Emergency Admittance across the top.  She pointed to one line and said, "Write your name here."  Then she pointed to another line and said "Sign here."  I obeyed, ignoring all the other lines in the middle that were suppose to be filled out.  As soon as I had signed she immediately asked if they could give Peaches an IV.  I agreed.  Then she raced back to attend to the dog.  With my heart pounding, hands shaking, and a few tears rolling down my face, I began to fill out the rest of the paperwork they handed me.  I thought we were just dealing with a weak and dehydrated dog, but the nurse's response to seeing Peaches scared me.  I never feared her life was in danger till that moment.

After half an hour or so, the doctor met with me to discuss Peaches condition.  They had taken some blood and x-rays and were giving her medication to keep the seizures under control.  (My thought, "What?  My dog was seizing?")  The doctor said they suspected either an obstruction in her intestines or a toxicity of some kind that was affecting her neurologically.  She told me the plan on what they were going to do and the medicines they had started Peaches on and said she would stay there for at least 24 hours.  The doctor also gave me a price range for what she thought the "estimated" cost might be.  ("Holy Moly!  Do we need to take out a loan?")

I left the vet clinic at 8:45 and went home.  Len met me outside without the kids, so I could cry on his shoulder.  Then he learned the estimated cost and nearly started crying himself!

So now here we are a day and half later, still no dog at home.  The vet clinic did rule out the obstruction and are now just treating Peaches for toxicity.  We did have to contact the Poison Control Center and start a case for Peaches.  They ruled out the roach spray we used in our kitchen and the insecticide we used in our garden.  They fear the culprit for this whole mess was a moldy tomato we found half eaten in our yard.  Apparently mold is toxic for animals!  Learn something new every day.

While there are some advantages to not having a dog in our house right now, overall its really weird not having Peaches around.  Like eerily quiet kind of weird.  Food falls to the floor when we're eating and no one is there to snatch it up.  A dog barks outside and we go to the back door to see if she needs to come in.  I haven't vacuumed my living room rug in several days and it still looks decent.  We don't have to race to the front door when someone knocks to keep Peaches from barking her head off.  Its just weird!  She is our 5th child and she is an important part of our family.  We trust the staff at the clinic to take good care of her, and it looks like she's going to pull through and be home in another day or two.  We just feel a bit out of sorts with our missing link.  Hopefully our man down will be back up soon!