Where have I been?

I have been away from blog land for some time now. I have a lot of excuses and thankfully they are pretty legitimate. Our computer had some parts break which made it inoperable – so we had to order some from Dell which took some time. Secondly and more importantly, our dog Princess became very ill. We noticed she was not herself last Monday and called the vet. They could not see her until the next day – but we didn’t worry too much. Things went downhill very quickly from that point on.

Besides signs of depression and no appetite, Princess was vomiting profusely and had constant diarrhea. Part of the major concern was that they were both very bloody. They started a series of tests which included blood work and x-rays. She was hospitalized for several days and was on IV fluids and antibiotics. At first they were concerned that she has swallowed a foreign object – but the blood tests showed that she had hemorrhagic gastroenteritis. That is a fancy way of saying the above was caused by a bacteria. Thankfully we had her in to the vet right away because she could have gone into shock and had a much worse outcome.

Though she was hospitalized during the day – we had the option of watching her ourselves at night instead of admitting her to the emergency hospital for night care. As worried as we were – I decided to take over her “nursing”. It was hard because we had to water her from a syringe and forget eating. She was still…ummmm….expelling at both ends. I slept on the couch and woke up when she got sick to comfort her and try to clean the mess (which was insane!!!).

After she came home she was put on several different antibiotics. It took about 3 days to get her to eat her own food again (I think she was scared it would come back out so violently). Also, the vet had suggested scramble eggs until her stomach was fully settled. I think Princess got really used to the eggs. She could eat 3 in one sitting!

Needless to say, Princess is doing so much better. She has her spirit back – which also means she is back to causing trouble! Although she is much skinnier than we like – which is hard considering she was only 10 pounds to begin with – she is doing great! We rented a carpet cleaner and Tim was so great to clean the carpets…several times each! He also got down on hands and knees to scrub the floors. So our house is now illness free.

I’ll be back this afternoon with a mommy and baby post!

Candee