He Promised Us

February 9, 2011

It all started two and a half weeks ago. 

When Chris and I get home from work, Duke is happy as a clam.  He welcomes us at the door, tail wagging, he’s crying/whimpering, likes to jump up, pounces at us, runs around, and we promptly go outside so he can go potty.  (We live in a town home and he’s pretty much a cat stuck in a dogs body; seriously.  He’s not a super crazy energetic dog like most German Shepherds, or like my parents two dogs, Rex and Jack.)  So 2.5 weeks ago when Chris got home, he let Duke out, Chris walked to get the mail and when he turned around to walk back, Duke looked at him, and thought Chris pounced at him to antagonize him so Duke took off, leaped off the snow bank onto the blacktop driveway that was snow covered/kind of slick.  He was running like the dogs in this video below.

 German Shepherds Running (This is not my video, just someone off YouTube!)

Anyway, he landed on the blacktop and went to turn real fast and run back at Chris (they were playing!) and ended up hurting his back left leg.  He didn’t yelp, he just stopped what he was doing and we went inside.  It’d be compared to us rolling our ankle and it hurts like hell most of the time.  However, his back leg didn’t start bothering him until the next night when he’d try to get up from laying down and when he tried to go up stairs, on the couch or on the bed.  He couldn’t do it, which definitely wasn’t normal for him since he could do all of those things the night prior.  Clearly it was something related to the slipping outside that Monday night.  We figured we’d give it 5-7 days and if it didn’t get better, we’d bring him in to the vet.  Well, apparently it was bothering him… he wasn’t himself, he whimpered when he had to use that foot for getting up.  (Side Note:  Once he was up and walking, he was fine… he could play with his ball, walk normally, it was just when he had to bend it from getting up/sitting/etc.  We knew it wasn’t broken and it had to be muscle related.)  He had to go to the vet anyway for his yearly shots so a week later, I made an appointment.  We got him in the next night, the vet felt everything, seemed to be his back left hock that was causing a problem and he gave us 5 days of anti-inflammatory medication and said to come back if it wasn’t better in 5-6 days.  His last full day of pills were this past weekend on Saturday.  We had one pill left and we were going to see how he was on Sunday.  Well, Sunday he was okay, we thought he was doing fine… then Monday rolled around, and he was right back to square one.  In pain like he was prior to starting the anti-inflammatory meds; so we gave him his one last pain pill and that seemed to help.   Looking back, he probably wasn’t in pain or showing the signs on Sunday like he did on Monday because on Sunday he still had meds left in his system.  Tuesday, yesterday, the vet called to check on Duke and see how he was doing and I told him Chris and I were looking at him and were concerned that now his front joints were swollen and painful; and we were concerned about his jaw bones and him yawning. 

Red Flag.

The vet was immediately concerned about his symptoms and he said he didn’t mean to scare us but that he is very concerned about Duke and his symptoms and past few weeks and he wants to see Duke to make sure we’re not dealing with an Autoimmune disorder.

Autoimmune?

What about arthritis?  Or, something minor like pulled muscles or Panosteitis or… you know, something other than AUTOIMMUNE. 

I tried to stay calm and think about his other symptoms… how everything had transpired over the past few weeks and why the vet was concerned.  He didn’t like the joints that we thought were affected and his jaw.  He didn’t like how it was hard for Duke to use his back end to get up; that’s a huge sign of a problem, especially for GSDs and their common history of hip problems and lower back issues.

Of course, I played Dr. Google with everything and being that German Shepherds are so susceptible to certain autoimmune disorders one of them being Degenerative Myelopathyand I immediately freaked… I read through the symptoms and this was similar to what he was experiencing. 

I’m freaking out this much over a dog, how will it be with a child?  Duke IS our child, he’s our baby… we TREAT him like he’s HUMAN!  People would think we were CRAZY.  But, he’s our baby and don’t worry.. if you’re one of those people that get fiesty over the “I’m freaking out this much over a dog, how will it be with a child?” …don’t worry, he IS a child, but he is also a dog, and quite frankly you can’t compare a child with two legs to a child with four legs.  I’d put my whole life savings into a human being child of our own if I had to, but a dog is a little different, unfortunately. 

Anyway, we brought him back to the vet last night… I had done some more research and was feeling a little bit better at the whole situation.  I read that DM doesn’t come on suddenly and all of Duke‘s symptoms did after he slipped.  Long story short, we had a different vet at that office and after thoroughly looking over him, pulling, stretching, pushing, pinching, moving, holding, pressure, etc on everything, it was all perfectly strong and healthy and no pain except for that back left hock.  His front joints weren’t swollen like we thought, and he jaw wasn’t a concern… we were likely just getting paranoid.  She also said he doesn’t have any arthritis or anything like that; sure it’s common in GSDs but this is solely related to the one joint due to the trauma/injury those two weeks ago.

Two weeks of anti-inflammatory medications and absolutely zero exercise to heal this tendon up.  The vet is very very hopeful that this is what it is; she’s not concerned about autoimmune disorders like the vet was when I talked on the phone.  She said she could see why he (the vet that I talked to on the phone) was concerned at the time, but after seeing Duke, she said she’s very confident that the two weeks of full rest will take care of it.  No running, no stairs, no jumping, nothing… and, I won’t complain when we have to carry him up the stairs for the next two weeks, or help him… if that means it will get him better, I’ll do whatever it takes especially knowing now that we’re not dealing with an autoimmune disorder.

So, for now… I can breath a huge sigh of relief and watch him lay on the couch knowing that God willing will be around for another 5+ years.   

After all, he IS only 3 and a half… he’s just a baby yet!  And, besides, he promised us he is going to live FOREVER!

**Photos Courtesy of Modern Life Pets {http://www.modernlifepets.com}**

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Stopping in for a quick breath…

February 5, 2011

For the love of God, I miss you all. I seriously am not coming here often enough for the simple fact that a) I have ADD, I swear and every time I want to get on here and pump out a post I get derailed and focus on something completely unrelated to whatever I was just thinking about and b) because I’ve been busy as hell at work, at home, everywhere, and although it’s nothing necessarily bad, it still gets to be too much sometimes.

My wheels are spinning at about 122 mph and because of that I’m just going to be half way lazy and list out some bullet points. That way when my thought process jumps from cooking dinner to cleaning the bathroom to getting my car fixed to Lord knows what, it won’t be so crazy extreme and I can choose topics as I think of them versus paragraph form and getting in to way too much detail like I’m doing right now cause that’s another problem of mine. Diarrhea of the mouth err, mind?

I’m writing this on my phone so I don’t have bullets. Harumpf. Pretend!

:: Totally just had a brain fart.  You know when you’re all, “Oh! I have to blog about that!!” and then you get ready to start typing and you are suddenly, “Uhh, what was I going to write about again?” Then you just throw in the towel like I usually do and say you’ll come back when you think of it and then you never do. Or, maybe that’s just me?

Okay, focus Krystle. You know when a two year old has an attention spam of about 2.2 seconds? *waves* Yep, me too.
For real, where were we?

Oh pretend bullets…

:: Thank you God that it’s Friday and I have two days to do whatever I want.

Chris just text me and it popped up on my screen and then I lost all train of thought.

Try this again…

:: I’m crazy busy with school stuff, I take three classes every 11 weeks and it’s been fun, I’ll admit. I’m getting my Bachelor Degree in Digital Design & Animation. Super exciting stuff I tell you!

:: I am getting an itch for a new car. Too bad I can’t do anything about it. Stoopid.

:: We bought a new surround sound/home theater system for our living room. I’m sure our neighbors love that!  :)

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

……and so like I said, ADD or something.  It is now Saturday morning, and I am on my computer… and well, I figured I better just get this post out since I started it already.

So what’s going on in my life?

:: We are crazy busy at work, so much that I’m signing on here in a bit from home to read some medical records.  Exciting stuff, seriously.  Not lying, it’s very interesting to read people’s health history.  It’s not that I find JOY in reading it because I truly don’t, sometimes it’s heart wrenching sad stuff, but I like reading about medical stuff and other people’s lives.

:: Our new couch is being delivered within the next week.  So excited!

Okay my attention span has hit zero for all of the two minutes I was here.  No, I actually have to work on a discussion post for one of my classes that I forgot to do before noon today!  OOPS!

Be back sooner than later, PROMISE!

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Organizing my Google reader

January 25, 2011

I currently have over 1000 items unread in my Google reader. I cannot keep up with all the blogs that I would like to read. It gets to be overwhelming and I end up just clicking the “mark all as read” button more than I choose simply because I tell myself, start fresh! But the thing is… that start fresh never happens and I always end up right back to square one, right here where I am. Click on the picture to make it bigger, but I’m pretty sure you can see the sweet little “All Items (1000+)” in bold.

I just cannot keep up!! SO, because of that, I can’t help but clean it up… I just have to. I just don’t know where to start. I guess, with Google reader we can see reports and when and how often some people update and weed them out that way, but WHAT IF I MISS SOMETHING!!! What if I really want to keep reading them and then I accidentally deleted them? Is it the guilt I’m having trouble with? I don’t know, but it’s something… yeah, probably guilt. I always feel guilty for stuff like this.

But, really… how many of these people have me in their feed reader, really? I know how many subscribers I have, but I don’t know who they are… and that’s okay… I mean, sure, hai! Please subscribe! I won’t twist your arm to do so though… because quite frankly, I need to update more. That’s my own damn fault!

I think the main problem I feel is overwhelmed… overwhelmed with so many blogs to read, and so little time. I get inspired by reading other people and when I don’t have that option to read the ones I really want to read, I don’t get inspired, thus I don’t end up writing on my OWN blog. Weird vicious cycle, huh? AND, my other problem? The more blogs I feel I have to read, the less likely I am to comment… and I need to comment more. If I want comments on MY blog, I need to comment on YOUR blog, fair trade, right? I say so! So, I better get moving on that, too.

For now though, I need to clean house… I need to weed out the ones that haven’t updated in a few months, ones that I don’t read anymore, or haven’t read for a long time… and I just need to do it and be done with it and quit feeling guilty. If anything, I should feel guilty about NOT posting AT ALL or COMMENTING on your blogs, right? THAT is something to feel guilty about, not this subscribing/messy reader business.

And, for the record, just because you don’t see your name in the left column, doesn’t mean you’re not in there. I have a ton more, as you can see with the scroll bar, and it starts out at A again a ways down. I don’t know why I need to validate that, but rest assured, if you’re reading this chances are you’re in there. And, if you want to make sure you are, leave a comment with a link back to your blog and I’ll make sure you’re added, because if you read me… I want to read you! :)

So, how do you separate your reader? Do you group people up differently? How? I’m just flustered with this… I’ll have to work at it over the next couple days. But if you have any pointers, let me know… I’ll gladly take them!!

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