A new direction

I had meant to post last Tuesday, when Tony was supposed to have his biopsy, but it was postponed until last Thursday. I have an 11AM-12:15PM class Tuesday and Thursday, so I popped him into his carseat and drove him up to the vet for his 8AM appointment, then turned around and went home. About 5 minutes after I walked in the door, the phone rang and the caller ID showed it was the vet. Reading that, you probably have the same sense of foreboding that I had then. It wasn't good. While they were doing the pre-anesthesia exam, Dr. Kroll noticed that Tony's muzzle was swollen on one side. He has a mass there and another on the other side of the mouth towards the back. She began listing my options, and I stopped her as soon as she pointed out that he was there and prepped already, so it would be easy to biopsy the masses as well as his skin lesions. "Do it," I said. I didn't want her to tell me how much it would cost right then, figuring that when I went to pick him up was soon enough for that and I didn't want to be tempted to postpone finding out what this fresh catastrophe was going to mean.

I picked him up Thursday night, and he seemed a bit groggy, but otherwise his same old self. Even the techs were saying that if he didn't look the way he did (much of his fur shaved off, his face swollen, etc.), you wouldn't know there was anything wrong with him from his behavior. All weekend long he was fairly peppy and alert, and he still is today. But when I got home after my 8AM class today, I had another call from Dr. Kroll. The news was bad.

The biopsies showed that the masses and the skin lesions had the same cause: lymphoma. She was more upset than I was; I was numb (still am). I told her that I needed some time to take this in and figure out what questions to ask, and she told me to call her anytime, saying, "I'm always here." That actually made me laugh, because she certainly seems to be there all the time, even on days when I know she is scheduled to be off.

I wanted to get this posted as soon as possible for my family members who live all around the country, but I really don't have much more to say now. It looks as though this blog is about to go in a new direction.

The Zemanta feed just popped up the photo below with the caption "Shuttle's exuberance for life, lymphoma and all." I'm going to take this as a good omen.

Image by dglassme via Flickr

Insomnia strikes again

Can't sleep. Again. I have been like this as long as I can remember, although my mother claims I slept fine as a baby. Tony is a big part of my sleeping trouble. About three or four months before he was diagnosed, he started needing to go out in the middle of the night (one of the most obvious symptoms of diabetes), and my sleep was way out of whack until he went on insulin.

I'm one of those people who has trouble falling asleep and staying asleep (and, of course, falling asleep again). In the mid-1980s, I tried an experiment where I used self-hypnosis tapes to get myself in a pattern where I slept only four and a half hours a night (this was based on the 90 minute sleep cycle most people have); after 3 cycles, I would wake up easily, and I was pretty alert. I did that for almost a year, and accomplished a lot, but I think it made the overall sleep problem worse, not to mention that what made me stop was that my arthritis was getting worse, too.

I eventually got back to where I was getting at least six hours most nights, when Tony developed his bladder problem in June, and that set up another problem, what with the blood sugar crashes and so on. I couldn't sleep because I was afraid he'd have a crash and I wouldn't wake up, and now that he's stabilized, more or less, HE'S not sleeping at night. Part of his problem is almost certainly his skin condition; he's not scratching as much as I expect him to, but he has trouble getting comfortable. The last round of antibiotics doesn't seem to have done much, so on Tuesday, we're back to the vet for his biopsy. I have to trim all of the mats he's developed from the "extreme" shedding this thing causes, and he's going to look like hell. In the past week, he's lost fur on his face for the first time, so he's nowhere near looking his best. His mood seems good, anyway, and since he finished the antibiotic, his appetite is better than it's been since spring.

But he keeps waking me between 2-4 AM. It takes me an hour or so to fall asleep, so it seems as if I only had a few minutes of sleep before he's bouncing against my bed, wanting to go out.
My short-term memory and general recall have been taking a beating from menopause, and the lack of sleep is compounding the problem. Just tonight, I had to stop myself from freaking out because I thought I had lost a set of essays that needed to be graded. It turns out that I returned them on Monday.

I'm taking another shot at sleep now. I really just wanted to update about the biopsy.

How do you deal with frustration?

Well, I tend to do it badly in some circumstances, but there are a few where I really shine, if I do say so myself. For example, when one of my students needs something explained in a dozen different ways before he or she understands, I stick with it until I see the lightbulb going on, no matter how long it takes. This ability is particularly valuable when it comes to dealing with Tony's problems. I mentioned in my last post that he was having blood sugar crashes. After talking with both his vet and another doctor in the practice, we decided to take him off the Royal Canin Urinary SO and put him back on Lamaderm. I had taken him in because he seemed to have injured his right hind leg, but they checked him out on all fronts, which I always appreciate. It makes me wonder why I can't find a doctor for myself who is willing to take the time to cover all the bases (of course, I haven't really been looking, since I'm without health insurance -- for the last 4 years!-- so there's no point, but still . . .).

The results of their examination? Tony has a mild ear infection, which means a daily ear washing; his skin condition has spread from his stomach to other areas; his weight is down to 10.5 pounds; and he's developed osteoarthritis in his knee. At the moment, the tendon on his kneecap is "subluxated," meaning that it's come out of the shallow groove it's supposed to sit in. Dr. Campbell tried for several minutes to pop it back into place, but it wouldn't cooperate. Tony, however, didn't even whimper when she was stretching his leg out and moving it around -- this after he started shrieking at home, which was why I rushed him to the vet in the first place.
So, he's now on Rimadyl twice daily (and probably permanently), along with a daily dose of Torbutrol, since his trachea collapse is bothering him a lot more, and an antibiotic. Do I need to stress the importance of getting health insurance for your pets? I wish somebody had told me about it when Tony first arrived.

Because of the quantities of pills involved, I asked Dr. Campbell to give me prescriptions for both drugs, but now I'm kind of sorry I did that rather than just have them dispense -- I thought I could save money on the Rimadyl by getting the generic Novox instead (it's about half the price), but it's been a real hassle, and I still don't have the prescriptions filled after a week! Hence the title of this post. First, the pharmacy (at Drs. Foster & Smith) has to have an actual prescription or one faxed from the vet, which I understand and actually agree with as a policy, but mailing the rx's delayed the order a few days, and then yesterday, Fed Ex failed to deliver, leaving a sticker on the front door instructing me to pick up the package before close of business or they would have to wait until Tuesday (Labor Day weekend, remember?) to try again. Unfortunately, I didn't go out the front door until 7PM. The sticker said that the attempt was made at 9:57AM. This is what ticks me off. I taught an 8AM class and was home by 9:45; my mother, sister, and brother-in-law were all home and awake, too, as were all three dogs. The doorbell never rang -- when it does, it triggers a mammoth barkfest -- and we couldn't have missed that, even if we didn't hear our extremely loud doorbell!

I would love to boycott FedEx, but that's pretty much out of the question -- I do most of my shopping online. However, I am going to file a complaint with them. There's no excuse for what they did, and Tony will be out of his meds before the shipment gets here. I'm guessing that the dogs frightened the driver (they bark over noises outside, and the neighbor was mowing, so we probably thought that was what they were barking at). The two Great Pyrenees sound like all the hounds of hell when they get going; if just their minor warning barks scared him, it's too bad he didn't ring the bell. He probably would have lost control of his bladder over the ruckus that raises, a thought that I find very satisfying right now.

I hate to think that Tony might have to suffer even for a minute because of FedEx. I think that I'm going to start favoring businesses that use UPS. It's not a boycott, but it's the best I can do, and my frustration really needs some kind of outlet.