Friday hauled ass out of work to get home, grab maddie and get to the other side of town to the vet’s office.
Let me demonstrate for you the amount of driving I had to do
1) hold your arms in such a way that your left arm is down at an angle, perhaps 4 inches from your hip. Hold your right arm in the air, about 180 degrees from your left arm.
2) I work somewhere to the right of your navel
3) I live on your left wrist
4) the vet is on the middle finger of your right hand, right there on the tip
I did all of this on the day when they decided to turn the bowels of hell into a steam room but they didn’t bother to seal it very well. The land was covered in a thick hazy, steamy, humid heat. The AC is still broken on my car. The AC will get fixed very soon. I missed the exit and ended up driving about six inches past your middle finger and had to turn around and go back.
I was hot and crabby and I was damn fucking tired of the MPR member drive. Maddie thought she would express her discomfort by sitting in the back seat and panting wet dog breath on my face.
We got there, on time even, and she tried to figure out if she could actually fight the cat in the cat carrier. Ever since my mom’s cat tried to kill me and bury my body in the dirty laundry Maddie has issues with cats. She choce not to fight the cat, though it seemed obvious the cat wanted to fight her.
As a side note, I could not sit down as my butt was all sweaty and I did not want to leave a sweaty butt print on the bench.
Then the magic time came, we got in to se Dr Pierce Fleming, International Vet of Mystery! You know, whenever you go in to meet him he’s just regular. His name truly suggests he’d pull some crazy James Bond gadget out of his pocket and incapacite me while grilling me on my plans to take over the world. He doesn’t do that. He just does vet things. Don’t get me wrong, they are awesome vet things, but I haven’t yet seen him use his spy stethoscope, his nerve gas filled ear cone light looker thingy or even his secret rectal thermometer radio transmitter.It’s so weird that he would be named Pierce Fleming and not utilize his special spy tools more often.
On the other hand, he utilized much awesomeness and that is an acceptable substitute. We discussed Maddie’s condition. Not only did her infected feet come flaming back in but also she was losing patches of fur. The patched of fur are a staph infection that comes from the same staph infection in her feet. Okay. So that can be fixed. Our previous plan of “hold down this infection and punch the shit out of it until it dies a wet and gasping breath” did not work out as well as we hoped. We now moved on to Plan B.
Plan B involves trapping the infection in a cage and regularly poking it with a stick for the rest of Maddie’s life. We’re still going to beat up the infection with the cephalexin. Beat it up so hard it will beg for mercy. It will get no mercy. I will eat a giant turkey sandwich while it begs and I will laugh at the infection, spraying it with partially chewed sandwich as that is the most disrespectful thing I can come up with (maybe Pierce Fleming and I should join forces and he can catch the baddies and I can interrogate them…hmmm). At the same time that she is receiving the cephalexin for the infection, she will also be getting a lot of prednisone to help keep the swelling and inflammation down.
Once we get everything under control we keep doing the same thing for 14 more days. This is important. Even if everything looks perfect we still keep kicking the infection in the ribs. If you are a staph bacteria on my dog, I will be a total asshole to you.
After her 14 days we will then ramp the prednisone down and try to find the lowest dose we can give her that will still be effective on her feet. This is where things can get troublesome in my heart.
If we can get her down to 1/2 pill every other day there should be no long term side effects to her health, even if she takes it for the rest of her life. I know without a doubt she will need more than that. Long term usage of prednisone can cause some side effects that may tend to shorten a dog’s life. This is where we balance quality and quantity. Obviously I want my dogs to live forever and never leave me. Obviously I learned last November just how impossible that it. As such, I want my dogs to live the dog-happiest lives possible, I want them to not only be comfortable but to feel good. Last year when we treated Maddie her whole demeanor changed. She was happy. She brightened up, she was goofy and playful. She was enjoying her life.
And as a person who tries not to anthropomorphize her dogs as much as possible, I mean it when I say she was happy.
This is my goal. I would rather she have fewer happy years than more uncomfortable years. You’d think that would be obvious, but it’s hard to accept. It’s hard to know that you are going to choose a course of action that could shorten your dog’s life, even if you know that the infections make her miserable at least that was not something you chose.
Maddie had such a tough time of it before she came to live with us and my commitment to her is that for the rest of her life, she will be happy, she will be comfortable and she will live without fear.
Last night when I got into bed she laid down next to me and stretched out against my belly. I wrapped my arms around her and kissed her head and I knew I was right.