Acorn Adventures: December 2010

Warning.... this post is a little on the long side, sorry for the rambling! :o)

2010 has been full of memorable occasions, and Thanksgiving (week) was no exception. We were lucky enough to have most of our immediate family together, and the day started out wonderful! Amazing aromas filled the house from the moment I awoke. Phil was up super early (as usual) and had the turkey and stuffing cooking away. He has mastered cooking the perfect Turkey! We all worked together making our favorite dishes, and Christopher even "helped" to set the table and disperse the napkins.

Our family started to arrive about 1:30pm and the dogs were super excited to see them all! Since it had been raining all morning, I put the dogs in their kennels to keep them from getting their muddy feet on our guests. Once everyone had arrived and were settled in with yummy hors d'oeuvres, we let the dogs back out to mingle. Not 10 min later - Rosie, our 8 year old black lab, suddenly vomited right in the middle of the munching guests! Nice. As we are no strangers to animal messes, Phil and I quickly cleaned it up and went about our business. Here is a picture of Christopher hamming it up for the family with Rosie moments before she got ill.

A very sort time later....it happened again. This time, our usually hyper, bubbly, playful girl started to look a little green (and believe me, if a dog could look green, she was). Poor girl. It's a good thing most of our family is in medical related fields; they weren't as bothered as they could have been! She started to look very uncomfortable and couldn't even lie down without groaning, so we called our Vet's emergency number and waited for a response. By then, the turkey was done and looking great, so while we kept a watchful eye on Rosie for any change, we proceeded with dinner as planned.

Christopher "helped" dad cut the turkey.

Does he look ready to dig in or what?

We sat down to an amazing meal with the best family a girl could ever ask for, and the most precious little boy ever created on Earth (I'm not biased or anything)! Despite my runny Jello, everything was just perfect. I was relishing the moment.

But something was wrong, and it was about to end our perfect afternoon. Rosie suddenly started to have difficulty breathing. She was in distress and labored for each breath. At that point I knew we couldn't wait for our vet to call back -we had to run! The closest 24 hr emergency vet to us is an hour away, so Phil scooped up our girl, who let out a shriek of pain when lifted, and my mom and I left the family table and sped in the rain to the emergency hospital. I have made this trip 3 other times (twice with horses and once with an alpaca). Once we prevailed, the other two times we were not so lucky. I silently cried they whole way there.

After vowing to sell an arm and a leg to pay the deposit at the veterinary hospital, they rushed her in for evaluation with a chest/abdominal x-ray and blood values etc. Surprisingly, they couldn't find a problem with any of her values or on the films, and decided she must have an easily treated "acute pancreatitis" from something really fatty she ate (though she was never out of our sight all day and nothing was missing that we were aware of). They would keep her overnight on pain meds and fluid, so we traveled home without her, but feeling greatly relieved.

When we returned home I was informed that our refrigerator is no longer functioning - nothing was cold! (Remember my runny Jello?) So now we had yet another vet bill AND a new fridge to squeeze into this months budget!! I was really bummed, but I am so thankful that no one ended up with food poisoning!! Yikes!

Phil traveled Friday to pick our supposedly "better" dog, but when she got home she was clearly no better. She couldn't walk strait and fell flat on her face getting out of the car. She wouldn't get up to go potty and barely wagged the tip of her tail when she saw us. We hoped she was just feeling punky or was a little drugged up from the pain meds, but it definitely made us nervous. Saturday there was no denying that she was still very ill. Our regular Vet was open and had us bring her right in. They re-ran all her blood values and did an abdominal ultrasound. We were shocked to learn that her liver was barely functioning!!! No one could tell us why or how, but they set straight to work with lots of IV meds. The vet even took her home one night to keep a close watch on her she was so sick! Fast forward a couple days and we sat on the phone with our Vet answering questions late into the evening. She decided that shy of a miracle there was not much more that could be done for her and the only option we had at this point was to take her to MSU for exploratory surgery on her liver to see if there was any chance the cause was something treatable. We couldn't imagine putting her through surgery in her deteriorating state "just to see" and decided that the best thing to do would be to bring her home and spend some quality time with her. Phil would pick her up the next day after work. We cried most of the evening.

The next day, while at work, I was informed that Phil was on the phone, since he rarely calls me at work, I immediately panicked and the first thing I blurted out was "did she die"? I prepared my self for the worst......but Phil let me in on the most wonderful news! When the Vet checked on Rosie that morning, she had suddenly and quite miraculously changed over night! Rosie greeted the vet excited and bright eyed and wagging her tail! They re-ran her blood values and everything was suddenly close to normal!! What?!!! Did we get the miracle we wished for? We were ready to bring her home to say good bye and suddenly everything is normal? All the vets that monitored her together can not figure out what caused it or why, but whatever it was, we are thankful it did! Today, Rosie is sitting happily at home with us, functioning liver and all! Thanksgiving this year was one for the books, and despite the craziness of the week, I can truly say that we have much to be thankful for! We have an amazing family and a beautiful son! We have a super cool new fridge on the way! We have a houseful of fabulous loving pets! We have an amazing Veterinarian and staff who care about our animals as much as their own! We're so thankful to have Rosie home! Wouldn't you do anything for this little face!!!