Busy Weekend

I thought Saturday was going to be a "me" day. I was helping facilitate an all day scrapbooking event and couldn't wait to work on the album from our trip to Guatemala. I did get a lot done on the album, but had a some stress in other areas of my life!

I was up and at the library community room by 8:45am, all set to have a fun day of scrapbooking. By 9:20 Missy had called saying she was trying to clean her room and Buddy was bugging her. I asked her where Dad was, and she said he was out for a run. I should have known it was an omen with her calling only 30 minutes after I got there.

The next phone call came from my sister at around noon. She said my mom had fallen down on a concrete sidewalk and broke her glasses, broke her upper denture plate, and they thought she broke her nose. My mom is 80 years old and has Parkinson's Disease, so she doesn't get around all that well. They head called an ambulance and she was on her way to the hospital. Throughout the day my phone kept ringing with another sister or my nephew calling me with updates. I wasn’t too worried, but thought I would probably be going to my hometown (one hour away) on Sunday if she was still in the hospital, etc. The last phone call I got was at about 8:00pm, when my nephew called to say they were on their way home from the hospital. So they didn’t keep her overnight in the hospital. She did break her nose, and also broke her left pinky finger. She has two black eyes and a couple of scratches on her chin. I talked to her Sunday morning and she seems like she’s in pretty good spirits – she says she’s really not in any pain (how could you not be in any pain when you fall flat on your face??) and my sisters were in the kitchen making sandwiches. She said, “I don’t know how I’m going to eat a sandwich.” (since she broke her teeth). I told her I could come down to help her later in the week and she said she didn’t really think she was going to need any help. Phew.

MEANWHILE, Hubby stopped in at scrapbooking to give me something and said the dog had been gagging and hacking all day. He had thrown up a couple of times too. I knew he had gagged a couple of times before I left in the morning. As the day went on, it seemed to get worse and worse, and Buddy called me a couple of times and said, “MOM, Boomer just threw up again.” I figured if hubby thought it was that serious he would call me himself or handle the situation. When I got home at 10:45pm, Boomer was still hacking away and had thrown up – basically water – two more times. Missy had a friend sleeping over and I went up to bed. About 20 minutes later, I heard Boomer again, and Missy came up and said she checked on him and he had thrown up all over his room. I went downstairs and there were six more little spots of water/foam. We decided we needed to take him in. Of course the closest emergency vet is 20 minutes away and when we called they said they were just going into surgery and it would be a two hour wait. So I called another place even further away and left with Boomer at 11:50pm. I didn’t get home until 2:30am. Boomer stayed there until Sunday afternoon. They said I could have probably brought him home Saturday night, but I was sooooo tired I just wanted to go home and go to bed. I thought it would be better for him to stay there. They’ve determined that he has something called megaesophagus, which is basically an enlarged esophagus. This is not curable, but it’s definitely manageable. We’ll just need to feed him in a more upright position – the vet tech told me on the phone this morning that he would be a perfect “counter dog” (meaning he could eat off the counter). I laughed and said she had no idea how many things he had eaten off the counter that he wasn’t supposed to. Anyway, after he eats we’ll probably have to keep him in an upright position for awhile (hopefully not more than 5-10 minutes). This will help the food go right down into his stomach instead of staying in his esophagus.

Oh, and of course the emergency vet bill was was $700. OUCH.

I’ll definitely be checking in with our vet this week. I’m not convinced that this is what he has – I googled it this morning and found the symptoms and he didn’t have any of the symptoms. But they did a barium xray and said his esophagus is enlarged, so that might be the definitive diagnosis. There are also conditions that could cause this – like thyroid issues – so I suppose we’ll have to look into that too.