Day 3396

Today was tough. Dash refused to eat or drink today. Not eating is bad enough, but not drinking is even worse. Dogs that refuse to drink water can have kidney disease among other things. I've always worried about renal failure, but I think one of the symptoms for that is drinking too much water. At any rate, refusing to drink water definitely isn't normal.

 I called Dash's vet at the cancer center and he said that if we couldn't get Dash to drink water by later this evening, we should take him to an emergency vet and put him on IV fluids overnight. With so many serious problems already, we definitely don't want to let Dash become dehydrated. I was just about ready to make an appointment with the emergency vet, when we tried one more time to get Dash to drink. This time it worked. Dash drank a lot of water from his bathroom water bowl and then about thirty minutes later he drank some more from the kitchen water bowl. Crisis averted.

We're still going to take him to the vet tomorrow morning to check his blood work and make sure his kidneys aren't starting to fail. We aren't out of the woods yet, but he's had enough water so that I don't think we need to put him on IV fluids tonight. Eating is still a problem. Dash refused to eat anything for most of the day. He wouldn't even take his pills. After we got him to drink water this evening, he finally was able to eat a small ground beef patty and some bread. That's not much for an entire day, but at least it's a start. We'll try the appetite enhancer the vet prescribed tonight.

Janet was home today so I was able to keep my haircut appointment. The only time slot that was available was later in the day, so I ended up driving home during rush hour. I try to avoid this time of day at all costs because the traffic is horrendous. It certainly wasn't this bad when we moved to Dallas. How are people able to put up with this day after day? I'm surprised that road rage isn't worse than it is. It's been decades since I've had to deal with any type of commute. Working out of your house spoils you. I don't think I could handle commuting anymore.

While I was out this afternoon I renewed some prescriptions for Dash. This was being optimistic, since at the time, Dash still hadn't taken any of his daily meds. Luckily, we were able to give Dash his evening pills about an hour ago. I think today was the first time we've had to skip some of his meds entirely, but it couldn't be helped. This morning we weren't sure he was going to make it through the day.

I look more presentable after a haircut, but I don't feel any better. Today has been stressful. Hopefully, we can get some answers when we go to the cancer center tomorrow morning. Something is definitely wrong. Dash's periodontal disease might make his mouth hurt too much to eat normally. Maybe he has kidney disease. This is not uncommon with older Dalmatians. Maybe his cancer has returned. It could be almost anything at this point. A dog needs to eat and drink though. When they stop eating, it's all over. If we can get this problem resolved, we can work on the other things later.

Nellie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 2968

The WiFi went out today. I hate calling AT&T so much that I have a second WiFi hotspot with T-Mobile. Since outages are usually intermittent, it is often easier to use this alternate service than call technical support. I guess I could have done that again today, but I was so irritated that my U-Verse bill has gone up again I decided it was time to bite the bullet and get what I was paying for.

I hate calling technical support. It takes five minutes of talking to a robot before you can connect with a real person. Usually the technician you are speaking to is not a native speaker and the conversation is mostly "could you repeat that, I couldn't understand you." The tech support people are nice enough. They just don't speak English well. Before you can explain your problem, the technicians always wants to run some tests. It doesn't matter that I've already run the tests before I placed the call. They run the tests again anyway. Usually the tests are inconclusive and they want to send another technician out to the house.

That's what happened again today. I've been through this process too many times before. Usually the service guy just replaces the router and then you have to reconnect your entire WiFi network. I tried to explain to the technician that it might not be worth the trouble to send someone out, since I was thinking of dropping U-Verse anyway. He said he already had a ticket open and that was the only way to resolve my issue. "Could this guy you send out hook me up to your fiber optic network if he can't fix my router," I asked. "No, that's an entirely different department," said the technician. I wasted a lot of time today, and I'll waste even more tomorrow when the other technician arrives.

The stock market dropped another thousand points today. This is so irritating. I finally recovered from   the disastrous 2008 crash and was looking forward to smooth sailing in 2018. The market may have gone up too fast, but there is no good reason why it should be going down. Most companies are enjoying record profits. Consumer confidence is up. Manufacturers are hiring again. This is not like 2008 at all. Some people say this crash was caused by hedge funds shorting the volatility index and then having to sell stocks to cover their shorts when the trade went bad. Maybe. I just wish there were more people like Warren Buffet and fewer people trying to get rich quick by gaming the system.

Dash had a good day, but he definitely didn't have a good night. He woke me up several times last night and seemed agitated. He finally pooped, but it took him several tries. When he returned to bed, he started shivering violently. Covering him in a blanket didn't help at all. At one point he seemed to have trouble breathing and I became very alarmed. We've been through this before and knew there was little point in taking him to the vet. We just had to keep Dash calm and wait for the tremors to subside. It took about an hour, but eventually the shivering stopped and Dash started sleeping normally again. He woke up this morning as if nothing had happened.

I think the shivering and tremors are another aspect of Dash's vestibular disease. They also could be caused by the blood clots in Dash's heart. I wish there was something we could do, but Dash's doctors have no answers. Sometimes I wonder why they don't try a different blood thinner like Warfarin or Heparin, but maybe these medicines don't work in dogs.

If Dash is feeling well, I might go out for breakfast tomorrow. I'm not that hungry. I just need to get out of the house for a while.

Taylor is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 2959

Finding a refrigerator that will fit in our house is like looking for a needle in a haystack. I spent most of the day visiting stores and talking to people on the phone and still haven't found what I'm looking for. It's frustrating. I found one model that looks like it would be a perfect fit for our kitchen alcove, but nobody in the Dallas/Fort Worth area has one on their showroom floor. I'd hate to buy a refrigerator without seeing it in person first. One thing I've already learned is that there are a lot of surprises. The descriptions on the internet aren't always accurate, for starters. When you are trying to fit something in a space with only a half an inch of clearance on either side, measurements must be accurate.

Even how the door opens is important. Depending on where the hinges are placed, some doors will still open when placed next to a wall and others won't. Some models require two to three inches clearance behind the refrigerator and others can live with one inch. I think this is why I tried so hard to repair my existing refrigerator. It is really hard to find something that will fit in my kitchen.

If General Electric still made the model I currently have, I would just buy another one. This side by side model lasted a long time and came with with an icemaker in the door which isn't even available in smaller refrigerators anymore. I saw refrigerators today that had built in internet browsers, WiFi cameras, and little doors so you didn't have to open the big door to grab a can of pop. There was even one refrigerator that has a built in Keurig coffee maker. All this useless stuff and I couldn't find a single model with the icemaker I wanted. I couldn't find anything with as much space as my current refrigerator either.

I had a scare last night. I woke up about 3 AM and Dash felt very cold and was shivering. He was still asleep, but something didn't seem right. His breathing was too slow and I began to worry that one of the blood clots had broken apart and gone to his brain. I covered him up with a blanket and the tremors gradually subsided. About an hour later Dash woke up quickly and headed straight for the back door. I wasn't fast enough unlocking the door and he ended up pooping on the living room floor again. Dash isn't incontinent yet, but we are headed in that direction. At least his breathing seemed normal again though. I cleaned up the poop and we all went back to bed.

Dash wanted to walk today but he didn't seem to have much energy. Our walks were very, very slow. I'm glad we're going back for another echocardiogram and exam this Thursday. I hope his new medications are working and that we'll be able to go back to a single blood thinner soon. Dash bleeds way too easily now. It makes me real nervous. Last night he brushed against a low branch while I was taking him outside to pee and ended up getting a cut on his back. The scrape was very, very minor, but he bled anyway.

It was really disappointing to have a big stock market sell off today. It was inevitable, and quite normal that this would happen, but I'd be a lot happier if the market would just keep going up indefinitely. Even a 5% correction makes me fret these days. There doesn't seem to be any room for error anywhere. I've got to keep Dash calm and hope the blood clot doesn't shift. I've got to find a refrigerator that fits in our impossible alcove. I've got to find a way to make my investments last in an increasingly volatile world. Maybe I'm imagining things, but life seemed a lot easier thirty years ago.

Malcolm is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 2765

We had to take Dash to an emergency vet last night. He had thrown up earlier in the evening and we'd hoped that giving him a Cerenia pill would settle his stomach so he could sleep. Unfortunately, things got worse. About 1 AM he woke up up drooling heavily while walking anxiously around the house. It seemed like he wanted to throw up again, but when we took him outside, he just froze in the back yard and couldn't seem to move. Something seemed very wrong. We thought he might be having another vestibular seizure, even though there were no rapid eye movements or head tilting. After about twenty minutes, he calmed down and tried to sleep on the bedroom floor. We were relieved that the episode seemed to be over, but then about an hour later it started all over again. This time the heavy drooling was even worse. We began to worry that he might have been poisoned and rushed him to the nearest emergency vet. His vital signs were good and the veterinarian who treated him said that there weren't any obvious signs of poisoning. We were at the vet for about an hour and around 4 AM, Dash began to stabilize. The vet agreed that this looked a lot like vestibular disease, but said the symptoms could also be caused by a half a dozen other things.

We took Dash home and tried to get a little sleep before Janet had to get up and go to the eye doctor. Poor Dash. We've been hoping that his vestibular seizures were over, but apparently not. There isn't a lot you can do about idiopathic vestibular disease. If you can determine the cause, you can sometimes eliminate the problem, but not always. We've already done an MRI of his brain and eliminated the possibility of a brain tumor. He doesn't seem to have an inner ear infection either. I'll have to check his thyroid levels again. Sometimes low thyroid levels can cause symptoms of vertigo and nausea very similar to vestibular disease. There really isn't a cure, so we may be dealing with these periodic episodes for the rest of his life.

Dash seemed fine today. We didn't walk him and fed him a very bland diet. So far, so good. I've started taking Niacin before bedtime again. My doctor say it helps with cholesterol problems, but the flushing it causes is uncomfortable, so I try to be asleep when all the little capillaries start to dilate. Last night when Dash woke us up, the Niacin flushing had begun and my skin was bright red. When we went to the emergency vet, I looked like I had a severe sunburn all over my body. The vet probably though I'd gotten confused and gone to the wrong hospital. I certainly looked worse than Dash.

By the time Dash's heavy drooling stopped, my skin had returned to it's normal color. The only good thing about the worrisome night was that on the way home from the vet, I got a chance to see a beautiful thin crescent moon in conjunction with Venus in the early morning sky. Today, we were all pretty tired and Dash and I spent a considerable amount of time napping.

I got a few things done today, but not much. I picked up some meds for Dash, bought a new sprinkler for the yard at Home Depot, and filled the car with gas. I received a new writing job this afternoon, so I'll probably be busy tomorrow. For some reason, I thought it was Wednesday for most of the day. Janet had to remind me to take out the trash this evening. I was going to wait until tomorrow evening. I hope that Dash sleeps well tonight. I hope we all sleep well.

Lady Jane is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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