My amaryllis (or is that amarylli?) are outdoing themselves. The new one I just bought is on its second huge bloom.

And now the oldest one I have (given to me in 2008) is blooming as well and has another flower stalk coming up from the base!

The other one I have had since 2009 also has a flower stalk coming. I had given up on both of the older ones, thinking that they didn’t have it in them anymore. But they do.

And so does Alex. He has bounced back from Terrible Tuesday in ways that make my heart glad. This morning as I came downstairs and took the baby gate down from the stairs he whipped past me before I even knew what was happening and ran up the stairs and jumped up on the bed with Rick. Good grief. He really shouldn’t be jumping on things just yet. But, this is his morning routine and he decided not to be swayed from it.

He also picked up a toy and carried it around for the first time since his surgery.

We are cutting back on his Tramadol over the weekend to see how he handles that. Frankly, I’m not sure he needs it anymore but I don’t want to stop too soon. It’s only been a week after all.

We are getting ready to do some grocery shopping and I don’t think he’s going to let us leave the house without him. We’ll gently lift him in the truck and back out again, but I think he’s ready for a ride.

How wonderful is that?

Yesterday was a rough day. I’m not going to lie. Alex could barely get up, let alone go outside to take care of business. I thought to myself oh my god, I put this poor dog through surgery and now I’m going to lose him just like that. It was that bad. He was miserable. He could barely walk once we got him up and he limped and could barely move. When he came in he was shivering. I’m still not sure if it was shivering as a pain response or the fact that he drank a lot of cold water right after he came back in. He was just laying there shivering and would not even make eye contact with me. The shivering stopped after my covering him up and rubbing his body to warm him up, but he did not, and would not, get up. I knew he was not crashing and in need of immediate care because his temperature was way down from what it had been and his color was good with nice pink gums.

I had a call in to Oradell Animal Hospital (the emergency vet) but we still had not heard anything by around noon. Not getting any response there, I called my local vet just so I could be assured that he was indeed stable albeit miserable and didn’t need to be seen. My vet concurred that Alex was in no immediate danger but probably needed more pain meds and most likely an NSAID like Rimydal. He didn’t understand why they would not send him home with it. He was going to try and call them since it was not really his place to either up his pain med or prescribe another drug in case they had a reason they did not want to.

So we waited. And waited. And waited. In the meantime my dog is in pain and feeling like crap. I felt awful too. I called Oradell again and complained after waiting on hold for ten minutes in a queue of calls. I didn’t hear from my local vet either but I imagined he had the same trouble getting through to them that I did. Plus, he sounded like he had a pretty full day of his normal appointments.

Alex started to come around to feeling a bit better after we had to hand feed him while he was laying down for his evening meal. How sad is that for a big dog to not be able to even lift his head to eat? Rick sat on the floor and hand fed him piece by piece of the round steak I had cooked up for him. Pretty sad. But he was eating and drinking (I had to bring the water bowl to him) which was a good sign.

Finally around 6:00 the doctor from Oradell finally called. She thought his pain might be coming from having been manipulated under anesthesia, pulling on his legs to position him, etc. It made sense since I was seeing it mostly on his front legs. She did apologize but it didn’t sit well with me. She said she hadn’t realized I was trying to get in touch with her, so what good is their system I ask you? At one point the person who answered the phone and I let loose on about it all said that after all if I was concerned my dog was not well I should bring him in. Right. Bring in my dog that is not ambulatory at this point to sit in your office for how many hours before he could be seen? Don’t think so! The vet told me his pain dosage was the absolute minimum for a dog his size, so I should increase the dosage. Duh! Also that if he was not improved to call back the next day and let her know so she could fax over a prescription for an NSAID to my local vet. I pretty snarkily asked her how I should go about doing that in a way that was better than the way I tried to contact her today?

I called my vet’s office after I had talked to her and let them know that Dr. Louer didn’t need to call me and gave them the low-down on what was going on. About a half hour later Dr. Louer called anyway, as I kind of thought he would. He talked mostly to Rick. This was around 6:30 p.m. He said he had tried to contact them but he couldn’t hold for ten minutes until they answered his call. He was pretty disgusted. Around 8:00 p.m. the phone rang again with Dr. Louer on the other end. He apparently had called and (in my mind) reamed the other vet out for not getting back with us and for not prescribing what he thought were the correct meds in the first place. She countered with saying that Alex was doing so well when they released him that they didn’t think he needed the additional meds. I told him that she wanted me to call back the following day regarding how he was doing and if he did indeed need the Rimadyl, and Dr. Louer, bless his heart, just said he was writing me a prescription for Rimadyl that I could pick up in the morning. He had obviously had enough of the other vet!

We upped his pain med overnight and Alex greeted us with wagging tail and got up much better than he had the previous day. His continued improvement over today has made my heart glad. He moves around from room to room, goes outside for business without incident (still a little ouchy) and is so much better. This afternoon when I went outside to get the mail he got up and was looking out the window barking at me! Hurray! He also was sitting and waiting to be fed and ate out of his bowl on the stand without coaxing. After that we had a walk on the leash into the backyard with me holding him back from breaking into a trot!

Go Alex!

I feel so much better today than I did with all the stress yesterday. And, so does poor Alex!

We are looking forward to Daylight Savings Time starting on Monday and drives in Mia (whose insurance we just turned back on after the winter). And, hopefully a good outcome of the biopsies. Fingers and paws crossed.

Thank you all so much for caring. Alex thanks you too!

When I left Alex at the emergency vet I whispered in his ear “Be strong, Alex. You can do this.”

Our nine-year-old baby boy had to have an emergency splenectomy yesterday late afternoon. We spent the entire day starting at 8:50 a.m. at our regular veterinarian to 4:00 p.m. at the specialty/emergency vet clinic down in Paramus. What a day.

Alex is doing well and expected to be home later tonight if he tolerates the step-down in his pain medications this afternoon. More to follow ...

Please keep good thoughts as to his continued recovery!

If you’ve been checking back here to see if I’ve written anything this week you would have noticed that I didn’t. That’s because there is not much going on at the moment. It seems that all our energy for the past few months has gone into the Academy Awards trip, and now that it’s over with we are spent.

Winter passed us by this year although we did wake up to about an inch of wet slushy snow yesterday morning. Today there is a bitter wicked wind blowing outside so we are inside for the day. There is nothing I hate quite as much as the wind. If it’s not going to give me snow and true winter then it can just turn spring as quickly as it can. I’m done this year!

Since winter passed up by without nary a thought and spring has yet to arrive (although the witch hazel bush in my neighbor’s yard has popped, and another neighbor had one crocus up the other day, and my daffodils have broken ground) there is nothing to take photos of. Boring.

I saved another bird yesterday. Sam was sitting and staring out at the deck rather fixedly and when I looked out there was a poor little junco huddled in the coating of snow on the deck, shivering. I put on my gloves and went out and picked it up. Its poor little beak was opening and closing at an alarming rate and I could feel its little heart beating away. I held it for awhile and was not confident it was going to make it. Its little beady eyes were closed and its feathers were heaving up and down. It was raining at the time, so I really could not stand out there and hold it any longer. I went back inside and brought out a towel, wrapped the little junco in the towel and put it on top of the BBQ. I left the towel lightly draped on it so it would not weigh it down. I did other chores (splitting wood) for about fifteen minutes, then went to check on my little bird. When I opened the door I could still see the bird inside the towel. Damn, I thought. But the next second the bird was out of the towel and flying away! Off into the trees it went. Another soul saved. Makes me feel good inside.

Are you still reading? Bless you if you are. Pretty boring stuff.

In other news, the two amaryllis that I mentioned here that I thought were not going to bloom have fooled me again. They both have buds coming! Amazing! While the new one has yet another bud about to pop. I think amaryllis might just be the most wonderful flower bulb yet.

I hope to be as inspiring as my amaryllis in the week to come. At least I would like to think so. Here’s hoping.

These were taken by Toni Lucatorto. Thanks, Toni!