All The Details About Fay's Health

If you had glanced in the window of Fay's examination room this morning you would have seen three medical personnel crouched on the floor over a small dog, heads down in full concentration, bodies tense with effort. You would have thought, "Wow, something dire is going on in there. I hope everything's okay."

It was her toenails. They needed trimming. She's the Tasmanian Devil about her toenails. That was the least serious treatment she got today.

Fay is in fact doing really well. Once she recovered from the problems she was having this summer her condition improved dramatically. She could stand up on all four legs again. Not for any useful length of time but she could do it. We had a nice period from late August to late October when she was feeling great and functioning well. She was still dragging her back legs and still incontinent but after the hell that was July that's nothing.

She's still doing pretty well, just having the slightest hint of a setback in that she became unable to urinate on her own. Because of this we increased her prednisone dosage and I learned how to squeeze her. It's all wrong but squeezing her is actually fun and she doesn't mind. She makes these grunty groany noises while you're doing it and afterwards she's grateful. Everybody wants to squeeze her anyway. Now it's useful.

These days she's able to urinate on her own again and we've lowered the pred. dosage a bit. I think she's lost a tiny bit of strength in her back legs since the pred. went up. I'm hoping she'll regain some strength now that her pred.'s lower again because I think I heard that prednisone can cause some muscle atrophy. I might be making that up. She could easily be weaker from her disease.

So all told today she had her weight checked, her temperature taken, her reflexes tested, a CBC, her skin checked, her urine sampled (they use a needle stuck through her abdomen into her bladder to do that - it's standard) her toenails trimmed, she got a rabies shot and the first of four Cytarabine shots she's going to get over the next forty-eight hours. The most horrifying looking thing (and the most difficult) was the toenails.

Now I need to do something really nice for Doctor Reuhlmann and her assistant, Jim. They have been really good to us.