Weekend Grosses

If it wasn't for everyone else doing it, I think I'd get sick myself. This past weekend was one of the oddest, most disgusting periods of 48 hours I've ever been through. I won't go into too much detail here to protect the squeamish, but ick. It started off on Thursday. Our dog has a serious garbage problem. He will wait and wait and attack the trash can in our kitchen at every opportunity, as I have mentioned on this blog before. Well, Thursday was the big score for him. He got a huge chunk of my son's birthday cake and who knows what else. Well, we expected him to be barfing quite a bit as a result, and he didn't let us down. He has a very sensitive stomach, and whenever he eats a lot of something other than his regular food, he barfs.

So, usually it works itself out within a day. But this time, it kept going through Friday night and into Saturday morning. We got worried that it was lasting so long. Because he was becoming rather lethargic. So we took him to the vet. They put an IV in him to rehydrate him and gave him some medicine to settle his stomach. He came back home with some new food, and he seemed to be in better spirits, though still not 100%. When we got home, it was almost time for my son's birthday party. So we put the dog's cage upstairs an let him rest in peace and quiet up there. He was fine for a while, but still seemed somewhat out of it. The party was over and we let him back downstairs. We offered him some food, but he wasn't interested. We gave him some pain medication the Vet gave us and went to bed.

The next morning, all seemed well, though the dog was still not quite his usual energetic self. I offered him food again, and he didn't want any. So I gave him another pain pill, and he relaxed in the corner of the kitchen as he often does. Then he was moving about a bit and he laid down where his food and water bowls usually are. This was unusual, but we didn't think a lot of it because he was probably sleepy from the pill. We went into the living room and a few minutes later, we hear the dog's paws scrambling on the kitchen floor like crazy. He is in a full-fledged grand-mal seizure. We did our best to make sure he wouldn't hurt himself, but he was disoriented and probably scared and snapped at Mrs. Dave when she tried to calm him. Then he more or less relaxed and acted as if nothing happened.

Well, I got dressed and took him to the Pet ER immediately. After waiting around for a long time, they did some blood tests, but really couldn't find any cause of the seizure. 3-4 hours later, we finally head home again. The dog seems to still be in that less-than-100% mode, but we go for a walk, and he seems happy to be out. He ate some dinner, and was relaxing in the living room. In the meantime we ate dinner. our son was eating slowly as usual and complained about his stomach being upset. Since we had been talking to him about how the dog's stomach was upset, we figured he was just trying to get out of eating dinner and using it as an excuse. We just told him to finish his dinner. That was a mistake. Within 5 minutes, he was barfing his lunch and dinner. Ick. So we cleaned that up. And finished what we could of our dinner. Then we went to the living room to watch a little TV before taking my son up for his bath.

That's when seizure #2 hit. It's a very odd thing to see this happen to a dog, especially since there's not a damn thing you can do about it, other than make sure he can't hurt himself. He was lying down on the floor and suddenly his head pops up, and he shakes it uncharacteristically. His nose starts to quiver first, followed by hard, uncontrolled opening and closing of his mouth (biting his tongue in the process). His head started to shake, differently from at first, now more like he didn't know what it was doing, then it seemed to pause for just a second, though his body was tensing up, before it shot through his neck. Then he jumped up on all four legs, and ran around in a circle. A funny thing to note while observing this horrible event, was that my son has a toy tower thing with cavemen, sorta like Fred Flintstone. But the whole idea is to build the tower and knock it down. Great fun. Well, the dog was laying on the floor next to that toy and as he was up and running in a circle, he collapsed, but crashed right into the tower, sending pieces everywhere, like a bowling ball hitting a strike. Overall, tragic, but funny at the same time...Anyway, he fell on his back and his legs flailed wildly, then simply became rigid. The poor thing looked so lost and confused. While his legs were still rigid, he started to heave and threw up his dinner. So we cleaned that up and I took him to the Pet ER again.

It's about 8:45 pm. We sign in, and shortly we're put in an exam room. The tech takes the dog's vitals, and leaves. Then we wait. And wait. And wait. Now it's almost 10:45 pm. So I go up to the front desk, not realizing how much time had passed and asked if anyone was coming soon. The doctor was in in less than 5 minutes, very apologetic, he was either told incorrectly or misunderstood that we had left. So, they take the dog and put him on an IV again, and put him on "seizure watch". I call home and find out that our son hasn't stopped vomiting, and Mrs. Dave isn't feeling so good either. She can't even stay on the phone long enough for me to tell her about what happened with the dog.

I get home and try to make everyone comfortable, but the night is only beginning. The boy barfs several more times and so does the wife. Let's just say things went downhill from there and I spent a good portion of the next few hours cleaning up after everyone. Doing so, I'm almost getting sick myself from the smell. Then we get a call from the Pet ER, the dog has had another seizure. Oy! Not sure what to think now. So, around 2 am, I'm able to go down to the couch (my wife and son were keeping their misery company with each other in our bed) and catch a few z-s. At 5:30, I hear my wife yelling out again, so I'm there to clean up again, and get them anything else they needed. I call out of work, then try to go to sleep again. Fortunately, I woke not to my wife yelling that she or the boy had just made a mess, just that she wanted more ginger ale. My son woke and came downstairs and ate some cheerios and ginger ale. He watched Noggin for a while. Then I got up to take a shower and get the dog.

When I leave, I notice my son has fallen asleep on the floor, so I just cover him up and head out. I get the dog from the ER, and he seems to be in much better spirits. He was happy to see me, and had no problem hopping in the car. So I took him to the his regular vet (who is also on of the head honchos of the Pet ER) and they have found some blood levels that indicate he has one of the highest levels of something, and it definitely pointed to pancreatitis. So, he kept him for the afternoon, just to make sure he didn't have more seizures and to make sure he was hydrated.

So, here I am this afternoon, Mrs. Dave and Dave, Jr. have been sleeping much of the afternoon, thank goodness. I've just been surfing the web a little and taking far too long to write this. I'm going to pick up the dog to bring him home shortly, and hopefully he'll be back to normal. We'll see.

But I just really don't want to clean up anything else that either came out of the right end the wrong way or wrong end the wrong way. I'm grossed out this weekend and on top of everything else, I have jury duty tomorrow. Blech. Wish me luck, and thanks for reading all this, if you bothered.

Dave