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February 4, 2004
"Okay, can we just get to the punch line of this bad joke?" (2-4-04)
Oh man, I don’t even know where to start. I feel like we’re on a downward spiral again and I really, really want to just climb into bed and never come out. Derek got laid off last Thursday and at this point, dealing with that and all of the money issues involved, as well as keeping up with real life as well, is just too much for me. Hopefully it will only be a few weeks before a new job starts up, but I think most families can understand that even a few weeks without a paycheck can be devastating. I know we’ll scrape by somehow, because we’ve been in this situation before and survived. But you know, I am just so tired. I feel like I can’t handle anything else, and even the smallest things put me straight into tears.
On top of that, our dog Xander has started having seizures. And I don’t just mean little ones, but rather the grand mal type that affects his entire body including bladder and bowel control. The first ones we were aware of happened the weekend we worked on the fence, although in retrospect I think he had one in early December as well. Since then he’s had about one a week, and yesterday he had two. The first one yesterday morning was really heartbreaking. Derek and I were still in bed but I had just said that one of us needed to get up and let the dog out before he had an accident. Then Aden came running upstairs yelling, “Mama, Daddy, the dog is pooping! He’s pooping a LOT!” We both jumped out of bed in a rush to get the dog outside and then Aden says, “Xander’s doing this” and he proceeded to lie down on his side with his legs kicking and shaking. My heart just sank. I mean, not only did it mean that dog was having another seizure but also that my son witnessed it. It doesn’t seem like something a 2 ½ year old should have to see and deal with. Luckily Aden wasn’t scared at all and we talked to him about it later, telling him that the dog is sick and it was really good that he came to tell us, and if he ever sees Xander doing that again he shouldn’t try to get too close to him but he should come tell Mom or Dad right away. I think he gets it, but the whole episode was and is really disturbing to me.
An epileptic dog… I don’t know, it just sounds like the punch line to a bad joke, doesn’t it? I finally took Xander to the vet today. We’ve had to put it off until now because they want to run a lot of tests that will cost a lot of money, and maybe put him on medication, and of course we don’t have any money to spend on ourselves, let alone the dog. But of course after yesterday I really couldn’t put it off anymore. Basically, the vet examined him and asked questions and suggested a lot of tests, and then I explained our financial situation, and he was very agreeable about working with us and only doing the very most necessary tests first and just working through this as inexpensively as possible. Which is still expensive by my standards, but at least he was nice about it. If anyone wants to know how they diagnose a dog with epilepsy I’ll be happy to tell you all about it, but basically we have to go down a list and rule out one thing at a time, and until then my dog gets to take Valium. Hmm, wish I could have one… Or maybe I could sell the pills on E-bay to make some money? Just kidding, of course.
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