Good news! I'm not dead.

I recognize that I've left you without a post for almost a week. ALMOST A WEEK! What is wrong with me and where are my priorities? Sheesh.

I'll try not to do that to you again. :)

The main reason I haven't updated was that I went camping on Thursday morning with a great group of people. There were some fun times, some frightening times, and some sleepy times. We laughed, we swallowed river water unexpectedly, and for a select few, we puked (please note that I was in the first group only). There are some good stories that I'm sure I'll share later. Access to email/phone was limited (town population was under 500 so all I had was my iPhone) so posts simply had to wait.

I came home last night (sunburned, hungry, and in need of a shower) only to find that my dog had been peeing all over the house and was sick. Peeing blood sick.* So after over 4 hours in the animal ER (Hello, Alameda East!), we know that she either has an immune deficiency, bladder stones, a blood disorder, or a mass in her bladder. Or at least that is all that the ER vet thought that could be wrong. Urine tests indicate that it is not a UTI. We gave her antibiotics and pain meds anyway which might or might not help. My vet is guessing that it will not help; however, I remain hopeful. Because basically NOT doing something drives me crazy. And besides, it looked like she was in pain.

I had alarms set every two hours to prompt me to get up, get her up, and make her go potty. In addition to that, I'm not sure how much I slept because I was checking on my dog all night long to see if she was okay. She wet her beds a couple of times while sleeping, so I kept checking to make sure that she was at least all right and that the rug was dry.

But I'm scared and I'm worried. I don't really know what the right next step is. I'm concerned about cost and about possibly quality of life. I'm overwhelmed at the thought of what I will do if she doesn't get better. I'm scared that I won't have anyone to lean on and completely lose my shit around if she does need to be put down. My normal vet is working on figuring out what our next plan of action might be. So I'm concentrating on the choices I have to make right now...and when I start getting anxious about what might be, I remind myself that I do not have to make that decision right now. I'm doing a lot of deep breathing.

But I'm still scared. And I'm still worried.

I'm so glad that I'm able to love on my dog and that I'm not still out of town. But I'm not very funny today...and I'm hoping you'll forgive me for that for just a little longer.


*Yes, my dog had a dogsitter that came over and stayed for hours twice a day. Although Chassis had an accident in the house with peeing and having some blood, she thought I'd be home in the afternoon and could take her to the vet if I wanted to. She's a cute little 20-something girl so I feel slightly bad for wanting to break her legs. When I finally got ahold of her last night, I had to do a lot of deep breathing so I didn't just yell. She didn't know it was that bad and she didn't know it would get so bad so quickly. I remind myself of those two things often. And when that doesn't work, sometimes deep breathing is all I can do.