Day 1693

I got up even earlier than usual this morning so I could walk Dash before taking Dot to the cancer center for her first re-check since the surgery. The doctors were really pleased with Dot's progress, but offered no easy solution to our current problems with incontinence and muscle weakness. It's going to take time for Dot's kidneys to start concentrating urine normally again and we should expect the weakness in her rear legs to gradually improve when she resumes her physical therapy. The good news is that Dot is recovering remarkable well from the surgery itself. After leaving Dot at the cancer center for for the day to get some additional tests, we got a green light to resume water therapy and we don't need to return for another recheck until early October.

I'm delighted at how well Dot is doing, but sure wish we could resolve her incontinence problems a little faster. I'm beyond tired now. Last night was exhausting. We had another major accident in the bed. It wasn't Dot's fault. We didn't waterproof the bed properly and forgot to take up her water bowl after 10 PM. After changing all the sheets in the middle of the night, I just gave up and slept on the floor with the dogs for the rest of the night. I'm thinking that it might be easier to just continue sleeping on the floor until Dot's condition improves. Sleeping on two dog beds pushed together isn't great, but it sure beats pulling all the bedding off the bed in the middle of the night while I'm still half asleep. So far, the mattress hasn't gotten wet, but it's only a matter of time if we let Dot continue sleeping on the bed at night.

I'm so compulsive that I kept waking up and throwing another load of laundry in the washer every hour or so for the rest of the night. The dogs were surprisingly good through all this. Dash curled up on one of the dog beds with me, while Dot lay by my side on a pile of blankets. It was a lot easier to get her out to pee this way, since we were already halfway to the back door. By morning I had all the laundry done and there were no further bed wetting incidents. I'm still not sure where I'll sleep tonight, but the floor is looking better and better.

While Dot was at the cancer center getting tested this morning, I had a chance to get out of the house and run a few necessary errands. I'm going to try to make an appointment to resume some gentle water therapy later this week. When Dot gets a little stronger and can dependably get up and down again, I'll feel a lot better about leaving her alone with Dash for a few hours.

I took several short cat naps during the day, but I feel like I could easily sleep for 12 hours straight if I was given the opportunity. The house is a mess, but I'm still getting my work done and Dot continues to get better with each passing day. I didn't really realize that the baby steps we're taking included cleaning up pee every night, but I'm trying to take it all in stride. Here's hoping that everything is peaceful, calm and completely uneventful tomorrow.

Pebbles is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 1686

We hit a little snag today. Incontinence. Dot began having urinary incontinence when she was hooked up to IV tubes in the ICU. Now that she's recovering from surgery and beginning to eat normally again, we expected the incontinence to stop. She doesn't wake up in a puddle of pee every night, but last night she did. What a mess. Despite the fact that Dot was sleeping on top of three waterproof baby crib liners, all our bed linen got soaked. I'm glad I had the forethought to get a waterproof mattress pad years ago when we bought the bed, or the mattress would have been ruined as well.

Until we can resolve this issue, we need to be a lot more diligent about getting Dot outside in the middle of the night to pee. Three hours seems to be the maximum amount of time she can hold it. Needless to say, we didn't get up last night and I spent most of the day doing laundry. If I didn't need to keep a constant eye on Dot, I would have gone to a commercial laundry. The bulky comforter and mattress pad took forever to dry in our dryer. Everything is fine now, but I must have done ten loads of laundry today. If you think the solution is just to have Dot sleep in a crate or on the kitchen floor until her condition improves, you haven't owned a Dalmatian. They all insist on sleeping in the bed with you. Heaven help you if you try to get them to sleep somewhere else. Dalmatians are very stubborn and tenacious dogs.

When I was throwing away junk mail and trash today, I came across some financial papers I should have signed and returned three weeks ago. That's the trouble with the mail these days. So little of any importance finds it's way to our mailbox anymore that I tend to ignore all the mail. Checking the mail had become just like checking the spam folder on my computer. Mostly it's all junk, but you still have to check, because every now and then something important winds up there by mistake.

I got a call from my hepatologist this morning telling me that the lab results from last week's tests had come back and I was still virus free. This is probably as close as I'm going to get to being declared officially cured of Hepatitis-C. Since I was one of the first to receive the new Sovaldi treatment, I'll probably continue to get tested periodically indefinitely. That's OK by me. With all the advanced testing the dogs and I have been subjected to recently, I've become somewhat addicted to test results.

Sometimes technology is just too complicated. There is no sound on the TV in the bedroom. The sound works fine on the TV in the kitchen though. My deductive mind tells me that either something is wrong with the TV, or something is wrong with U-Verse. Hmm. The TV in the kitchen is receiving the U-Verse channels, so U-Verse is apparently working. The TV in the bedroom gets sound from the Hulu channels, so there's nothing wrong with the TV itself. Why am I getting cable on only one of the two TV's when they are getting the same signal from the router? It's a mystery. I guess I'll just go to bed and hope I remember to get Dot up at 2 AM to pee.

Queenie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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