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!

So ... not exactly the weekend that was planned. Our plans were to do some shopping at the up-scale grocery store in Franklin Lakes, The Market Basket, and then go on to a liquor store in Wayne that was hosting Kathy from Real Housewives of New Jersey as she promoted her new Cosmo drink. I was looking forward to seeing her in person but it was not to be. As you know we spent Saturday in and out of vet offices. I’m not all that sorry about my lost chance to meet a “celebrity” since family comes first.Our dogs and cats are like our children.

Alex came home last night and passed the night fairly comfortably. I slept downstairs on the blow-up bed on the floor just to keep an ear out for him if he had any difficulties. He didn’t. One time he came and joined me on the bed and wanted his belly rubbed. His poor stitched-up shaved belly. The incision looks good, though it’s a long one. I can’t imagine how much he is hurting from having all that skin and muscle cut through. Right now he is on a pain medication that contains opiates, Tramadol, so he’s a little not-quite-with-it at times. He’s been getting lots of rest with short intervals outside to stretch his legs and pee. His appetite isn’t great but he will eat biscuits. Anything to kick start his appetite!

So, to recap a little. After acting off on Thursday evening, he was acting better on Friday. We were assuming it was because sister Bella had jumped on him again and wrenched his neck. I gave him aspirin throughout the day and he seemed to be better. But Saturday morning he was not better and we just knew something else was up. We took him in the vet who found an enlarged spleen on exam. Not exactly what I wanted to hear since the cancer hemangiosarcoma runs in his lines and one of the first places it shows up is the spleen (or lungs/heart). She did x-rays and blood work and when the x-rays showed a large mass she sent us down to the specialty vets in Paramus for an ultrasound. It was crucial to take a closer look and rule out involvement with other organs. His chest x-rays were clean which was a good sign.

In our consult with the vet before the ultrasound he was not optimistic. Alex’s blood work with higher than normal white cell count plus the mass in his spleen was not adding up to anything good. So, we left Alex for his ultrasound and went to eat lunch (which I could not force myself to eat). I was already preparing in my head to have to say good-bye to him before too long. BUT, it was a little bit different than I had imagined it would be. The vet said that actually the mass was pretty solid and not fluid filled like they normally see with hemangiosarcoma and it was completely contained within the spleen (something you could not see on x-ray). Added to that better than expected news was the fact that none of the surrounding organs (kidneys, liver) looked to be affected. Also on ultrasound they noticed that his prostate was larger than usual (he is intact and not neutered) so the high white blood cell count could be coming from a case of prostatitis and possibly nothing to do with the mass at all. At that point we knew we had to go ahead with the surgery and give him the best chance for a longer life.

Of course it was consultations, ultrasound and surgery on the weekend, so emergency fees were in place. We felt we could not take the chance on the mass bursting and rupturing the spleen if we waited until Monday at our regular vet. No way could we do that.

Another good thing was that once they opened him up for surgery there were no surprises and all the organs looked good, so a good chance whatever it is had not spread. It’s no guarantee of course, but a good sign nonetheless.

So now we just nurse him back to health. I have to keep in mind he just had major surgery and with all that opiate stuff in him he’s not going to be feeling all that good. He’s a trooper. He’s our Boo and we love him dearly.

Thanks for all your good thoughts. I’ll tell him for you.

Out for a quick yard visit this afternoon!

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!

What do you do with a photo of house finches all with their mouths open?

We had the first snow of the season that started in the wee hours of the morning on Saturday and ended after noon. It left behind about 7 inches of fluffy white snow in its wake. Finally! It was lovely to have nowhere to go and to just sit by the fire and watch the flakes softly falling.

The birds were very active and we both had great fun watching them and trying to capture them in photos.

female cardinal and junco

male house finch

male cardinal

The dogs enjoyed the snow too! Here are Alex and Hailey on the deck. If you look closely you can see Bella down in the yard.

Repeating patterns!

Our new little electric snow shovel (that acts like a snowblower) made cleaning off the deck an easy task. It worked like a charm!

Yesterday it did not get above freezing and cloudy so there was no melting going on. This morning it is already above freezing as I type and we are supposed to have temperatures in the 40’s with rain and fog. Easy come; easy go I guess. It was nice while it lasted!

leftover snow on our bathroom skylight