After a restless night of getting up, turning off the home alarm, opening the back door, waiting and waiting, the tossing, turning, standing, shifting, and resitting briefly on the bed -- Andi and I took Maddux to the vet this morning. Urinalysis showed white blood cells -- evidence of a bladder infection. So, lil' Madder Bean is on antibiotics. Oh, and chubs magoo is 'overweight' at 99 lbs. For a dog with horrid arthritis, extra weight is his worst enemy. However, due to his arthritis, we have been limited to what type and how much exercise he can physically tolerate. In a perfect world, we would have a heated salt-water pool for Mad to swim in ...chlorine pools suck -- they dry my skin and turn my hair green. In any case, the vet is supposed to call me when they have his blood work results in as well. Hopefully everything there comes up clean. My worst fear is Madder Bean getting ill. I think that would definitely send me way over my tolerance limit, and I'd have to go postal.
So, last night, I was able to read a few blogs of parents who have successfully weened their children off the tube. One was a g-tube, one a NG tube. (NG = tube that goes up the nose and down to the stomach. Andi had one of those just prior to getting her g-tube. Before that, she had an OG (mouth to stomach) tube because her nose was still healing from her choanal atresia surgeries.) In any case, one family documented their daily experience at the feeding clinic in Austria. Made me want to go there bad. Although, I did the currency conversion and I think the trip would cost more than my car did. Uhm, yeah... no thanks! However, based on what this one family wrote, it honestly made me feel like we could successfully ween her ourselves. It didn't seem that complicated, at all. The hard part would be being patient with her, and waiting for her to get hungry enough to make it happen. She likes to eat, she just doesn't eat enough....(keep in mind that she's got the g-tube feeding her four times a day for an hour each time, and then overnight for ten hours.) This family had the g-tube, and the child did not eat at all. So, we're one-up there. Instantly, they cut this kids feed schedule (same as ours) to one feed by g-tube during the day (when the kid was asleep) and cut it in half at night. Get the kid to experience hunger. Surround the kid with different foods and make it fun. It was very descriptive and I intend to have Daddy Bean read it. That just wasn't going to happen during the Blazer/Faker game -- and certainly not after when the stupid Faker's won when we should have...
Another website I read last night was a professional site describing the characteristics associated with CHARGE Syndrome. It was rather illuminating, although a little frightening about some of the difficulties she will face. I still haven't done a lot of research on CHARGE, but, was looking to see what I could find out there about the digestion issues. I haven't got there yet in the booklet.
In any case, we did a lot of supported sitting up in the vet's office, and Andi seems to be picking up her head more to help herself roll over. We haven't had the chance to work on food today, but, she did just take her Tylenol by mouth - instead of through the g-tube. I'm seriously hoping this cold miraculously stays out of Andi's lungs. It's a nasty cold and it's attacking my lungs now. Her Dad is actually ready to go to the Dr., and he hasn't been to the Dr. in so long that his Dr.'s office no longer exists. So, hopefully we're spared the tenth level of hell and Andi's lungs are not involved this time. That would be so nice, because I honestly don't know how she'll do with this deep hacking cough. Maybe we can all finally catch a break!?
Lastly, we have to say a super sad farewell to our beloved Joel Przybilla & Dante Cunningham. Two of my favorite Blazers were traded to Charlotte today. Joel is a fierce player who wouldn't take it from anyone; and Dante is fast, smart, and could help on both sides of the court. I still maintain that Dante will go far. It sounds like Joel might retire, which is probably incredibly tough for him since he just fought hard to come back from knee surgeries. Oh, it's a sad, sad farewell today in Blazerland.
No comments:
Post a Comment