It's like fighting fire. With arrows (Sunday).

It took us less than 24 hours to completely destroy the apartment after I cleaned it on Saturday. There are bits of foam all over the floor from the inside of her dog bed (I'm washing the cover, and she destroyed the filler while I was downstairs – no more than 3 minutes and she annihilated a twin bed sized foam pad) and laundry everywhere. The kitchen, which I scrubbed yesterday, is now full of dishes that need to be washed, and for some reason a few of the chairs are sticky. The dog won’t sleep, won’t eat, can’t play, if we take her for a “walk” she meanders about 3 feet and stops, stares into space and will stay totally completely still until you make her move or she falls asleep. When we’re in the house, she follows me really close (less than a foot of distance, which makes it impossible to move because I might accidentally touch her), but wags her tail and smiles whenever I look at her. Earlier she acted like she wanted to eat, but it was a clever ruse, she took about two licks each of the assorted baby food flavors I bought and then walked away. I guess it’s another omelet, maybe ill add the lamb baby food or the organic peas with brown rice.

*eight minutes later*

She fell asleep leaning on me standing up in the kitchen, and her omelet is cooling now. She did drop the bone (this squeaky toy she holds in her mouth and can breathe around) and is watching me type, wagging, so maybe she’s hungry and will eat the lamb-green peas-egg concoction I just made her, but probably not. Oh well, tomorrow we start prednisone and there will be a whole other set of issues – apparently she’s going to be so hungry there’s a possibility she’ll start nibbling my fingers when I fall asleep. One can hope – she’s down around 47.5 pounds now, normal is about 51.

In other news, I’m so tired I tried to watch ‘Flushed Away’ this afternoon, and couldn’t follow the plot. That’s a whole new ring of hell – I have a degree in English lit and I couldn’t follow a G rated Disney flick. SIGH.

Saturday

 I've spent today vacuuming the apartment over and over, because Honey keeps shedding fur / skin / whatever and its really, really gross. I can't take the e-collar (the cone-looking collar) off her at all now, because she claws at her face and opens it up more. Ugh. She did eat lunch, a 2-egg omelet with spinach and salmon, which i cooled to room temperature and hand fed her, because she hadn't eaten and was NOT going to eat dog food, thank you. Tomorrow evening we start prednizone, so she will be ravenous according to the vet, and will eat whatever so i'm saving the goopy dog food i made her that she wasn't interested in. 

The pain killer dose has increased from 25mg twice a day to 100mg three times a day, and I gave her the pills at lunch (cleverly smuggled in a hunk of salmon). After she takes pills, its really interesting to watch her as they take effect.  She goes from standing and being fairly alert to falling asleep on her feet. this morning I gave her a massage, and after lunch she asked for one so while the painkiller kicked in I rubbed her and she fell asleep with me supporting her. 

Saturday night we took Honey to our friend Eric's house for an 'end of radiation' party. We took her bed and blanket, and chew toy and we played star wars monopoly and she napped on the floor next to me. She started getting uncomfortable around 12 so we took her home and had a truly terrible night - she simply cannot sleep with the collar on, and someone has to watch her constantly if it's off. I got to sleep around 6 am, when Cameron woke up.  

Holding my breath until tomorrow

In re: moldy orchids, apparently some types of mold are beneficial and this is one of those types. I’m not buyin’ it, and I’m repotting them stat, as all I can find is one stupid photo of mold on orchids online. You’d think a community as obsessed with plants as the orchid community would have made full use of the ability to post photos to the internet, but evidently not. I can find a description of beneficial mold which reads like this – “white fuzzy mold I see on my soil” I mean, really. What is that? Not clear at all. And crazily unhelpful. But the plants look superhealthy so I’ll wait until they stop blooming and then repot in new medium. I’m currently drying them, to help inhibit the growth of whatever it is that’s using my babies as host.

Honey did ok last night, she wouldn’t eat well and we had trouble putting lip props in and keeping them in. she also refused to take her pills and we had to shove them down her throat, which made me cry because I know it hurt her and I hate that. I coated the pills in butter, came at her mouth from the side and shoved them between her teeth on top of her tongue, then held her nose up and stroked her throat so she swallowed them. She didn’t manage to spit any back up but I did bump her gums with my nails a few times and I know I scraped some layers of skin off. It breaks my heart that she lets me do things like that to her that have to hurt but she just stands there and lets me do it. I feel like a monster. Tomorrow is her last radiation treatment, and our final consult with the vet, and then the side effects get nasty. I’m not going to post any more current pictures of her until she starts healing, because I know I sure as heck wouldn’t want anyone to see me if I was that hurt.