Sunday, February 24, 2008

Side effects and Pearl Harbor Specials

I cannot believe how strong Honey is. Her face is starting to show the radiation effects, and it's not pretty. There are about three places on her face where the skin appears to be peeling off, and you can see red raw flesh. If I had one of those anywhere on my body, I doubt I would be able to do anything but cry and complain. Honey has three, one on her eyelid and she still wants to play. The skin is starting to slough off the inside if her mouth and it seems to be really painful to her to breathe with her mouth open, I guess when the tissues start to dry out they hurt. It's really difficult to put a lip prop in now, although we've switched to neoprene so it's pretty much the lightest, softest stuff we could find. I wait until she's almost asleep and then I slide it in as fast as I can and sometimes it works and she falls all the way asleep. We’ve also started running them under cold water before we use them, and I think that helps. I can't believe this is the same dog that wanted to play fetch this afternoon. It's really amazing. I can never hope to be as strong as she is. She and I spent all weekend lying around alternately eating and watching World War 2 specials on the history channel. If anyone has any questions about Pear Harbor, now would be the time to ask me.

We're anticipating pain while eating, there is already some but making her food a little waterier than baby food and spoon feeding her while telling her how good she is seems to work. She even sometimes bypasses the spoon and eats on her own, but I hold the bowl at face height and praise her anyways. I'm pretty sure she'd endure more pain if we were telling her she was good. Last night we got her frozen yogurt and she seemed to like it, she also likes her food better if it's cold.

This morning her left eye was really dry (it’s in the radiation beam) – full of gunk and the lids were folding in and rubbing against her eye. I don’t know if we’re allowed to put anything in it, we’re not allowed to put anything on the sores because lots of topical creams and drops etc. can disperse the radiation beam, and make it less effective. Cameron’s going to call when the vet gets there at 9 am, so hopefully our eyedrops will be radiation approved. In the meantime, I put a few drops of water in her eye and that seemed to help a little. I can’t believe the dog lets me put eyedrops in, she must know I’m trying to help.

I didn’t get much sleep last night (spent the night making Honey comfy, and unfortunatley she was most comfy on top of me), so I’m off to raid the coffee pot.

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