A Neglected Blog

Well, dear readers, I have neglected my blog good and proper !
There are reasons and a thousand excuses for that, but I'm not going to bother you with the latter.
The fact is that my head space didn't let me get onto the Blogger World.
We will be moving house and country soon. I wrote about that in October 2012 . I'll leave the developements of that subject for the next instalment on this blog.

Unfortunately when we got back from Sneem last October our dog Sam became ill. A bit of a dry cough at first, so a coughing syrup was prescribed by the vet. No sign of improvents made the vet give him antibiotics. Again, no improvement.
On the contrary, he became very weak and in a matter of days he lost his eyesight and lots of wheight.  In the meantime blood tests were done and the results showed absolutely nothing conclusive.  An ultrasound showed an enlarged spleen. Biopsy. Nothing conclusive.

Our next step was drive all the way to the Universitary Animal Hospital in Ghent. Obviously they repeated all the tests and were stumped, just like our vet. They advised a drip and cortisone treatment in the hospital, but we opted for that to happen at our vet's, which is nearer to us.

He got stronger and his eyesight came back.  He could come home, but has been on cortisone ever since.  Sometimes he gets a bit weaker still and then the cortisone dose gets upped.
It gets upped because he gets fatter, so he can have more.  He gets fatter, because he eats loads.  He eats loads because of the cortisone.  You got it, a vicious circel.

The vet now believes it to be a neurological problem.  Like a brain tumour.  Why not get a scan, I hear you ask.  1300€ is why.  They might find a tumour, but they might not.  And then ? We will know it's a tumour.  His treatment would still be the same.  Keep him comfortable till the day comes when we have to make this damn awful decision. 

A decision we recently had to make already with one of our cats, Squirrel. My little darling. Fourteen she was and was slowly getting  to the end.  Every day I think about her with pain in my heart.  I feel guilty, still.  But apparently it was for the best.

It is something you don't really think about too much when you get a pet. They just don't get as old as we do and there will be a point in our lives when we have to say goodbye.  It is hard.
On the positive side, they give us so much while they are with us. Unconditional love, great companionship. They make us laugh with their antics and sometimes they make us want to strangle them when they have pooped in an unreachable (for us) corner !

So you see, I have been preoccupied with  all sorts.
My next blog instalment will not be far off and possibly of a more positive nature.


Thanks for reading
Patricia xxx...x