Sunday, December 4, 2011

Update

Sorry it's been pretty much silent here for a while now, and I'm sorry that it is probably going to be silent for a while longer. The last couple of weeks are been incredibly draining. On top of general Thanksgiving/holiday craziness on of my dogs has started seizing regularly for about two weeks now. The first week we thought it was just stress from having my boyfriend's mother staying at our place (my dogs get really anxious around new people) and the vet said the first two seizures were pretty normal and gave me some vallium to give my dog before bed each night. She was fine on that and then I stopped giving her the pills after his mom left and she was doing fine for a few nights. And then she had another seizure a couple of nights ago and then the next night she had two within a few hours. I talked to the vet the next day and while the first couple seemed normal, according to my vet it isn't normal for her to keep having them and in such a short span of time. So The vet gave me an anti-convulsant medication to give my dog twice and a day in hopes that that may help some. Apparently it takes a week or so for the medication to really start taking effect and my dog is till seizing, though the seizures last night (three this time, one grand mal and two partial) seemed a bit shorter and not as tough ad the previous ones. To add to this she only seems to be seizing at night when she's sleeping so I have not been getting a good amount of sleep at all the past two weeks and any sleep I do get isn't very restful since my entire body is ready to jump up and into action the second I hear her collar make too much noise or her slam into something while she's starting to seize.

The entire ordeal is incredibly stressful. The only symptoms she has are the seizures so there's really no clue as to what is really happening. She's eating fine, drinking fine, she's still rough housing with the other dog like normal. Only slight change is she seems to get a little more tired when we go on our walks, but that's probably mostly because she hasn't been sleeping well due to her seizures. We've ruled out a metabolic cause because all of her blood work was normal, and now it doesn't seem to be stress induced. So it's been tough. The seizures are just really hard to watch and, at least for the first four or so, she would get really aggressive afterwards and seem to forget who I was for about 5 or 10 minutes after. But I have to be the one to sit there with her and pet her while she's going through it and talk to her, and I have to be as calm as I can because if I act stressed and scared then she'll be more stressed and scared as well.

So I haven't had much energy these past two weeks. I feel like a huge ball of non stop stress and worry, mostly because there's really no idea right now what is wrong with her. It takes most of my energy to go to work and keep myself from thinking about it so I don't sit there crying in my cubicle. And then when I get home I'm really only good for mindless activities like tv or some simple video games. And I spend a lot of time just keeping an eye on her since I need to write down any changes I see or make sure I notice when she's starting to seize so I can get everything I need to get her through it (towel so I can hold her without her biting me if she is aggressive afterwards, a dog kennel to place her in she she doesn't run around right after while she's still disoriented, and her medication so I can give it to her right after she comes around so she doesn't potentially go straight into another seizure).

Long story short, a lot of my energy is going towards trying to keep my dog as safe as I can while she's having some unknown medical problems and trying to keep me sane enough so I can handle it. Unfortunately doesn't leave me much time at all to do the blog or anything else I want to get around to doing. I'm hoping in the next week or so her meds start working and I'm not completely on edge 24/7. It may not lower my stress levels significantly, but at least I might be able to get some sleep.

As it is now I'm afraid I'm going to be away from the blog and most everything else until things work themselves out. I hate going on another indefinitely hiatus again since it seems like I was on hiatus only yesterday, but I just cannot get myself pulled together long enough to read anything, never mind do any sort of analysis of it. 

I hope everyone remains well in my absence.