Last week

Last week was crazy, busy, and rough. Started on Wednesday with a call from Nico's daycare letting us know that they were on a 2-hour delay because of the icy roads. So Matt (who usually takes Nico to daycare) walked to work and I was in charge of the kiddos. I should point out that, even on the days that there are no weather issues, I feel like a moving circus with all the million things that it takes to get us out the door. The ice and cold only makes the whole thing more... amusing.

So once everyone is fed, dressed and packed, and the dogs have been put away, we begin the process of leaving the house and loading up the car. First I do a trip to start the car with all of our stuff. What stuff you ask? Well, I have my purse, my pump, and often my workout bag (when I'm going to be able to workout at lunch). Then I have Nico's diaper bag and his lunch box, and finally Sofi's diaper bag. At this point I try to do a little bit of scraping of the ice to start getting the car ready. Then I go back inside to get the kids. On the days that either Nico or Sofi are with Grandma, there's also a trip in there to load up the dogs in the car since they get to go to Diana's too.

Cuddle times. Sofi seems unsure.

So Wednesday I got everyone loaded up and we went to drop off Sofi with the nanny. When I was walking up to the house (with Sofi in the car seat) I slipped on the sidewalk and fell on my hip. Fortunately Sofi was okay, but the fall startled and scared her, so she started screaming and it took a while to calm her down. I felt so terrible for her that I didn't really think about how I was doing (that is until I saw the huge bruise on my hip last night). All this with Nico in the car waiting for me.

I got to work with Nico and set him up on a chair to eat his muffin. He is really a pretty mellow kid, but it's always hard to have him at work and actually get work done. He has a million questions about things around the office, wants to be moving and doing stuff (and even if it's just climbing up and down from a chair it's still distracting), and once he notices the candy bowl nothing can distract him from wanting to eat some chocolate. At 9:30 we started making our way to Kids' Place and, even though it took us a while walking slowly, we got there without any more ice-related incidents.

He finally agreed to wear to the sweater my mom made for him (months ago) and he loves it.

The rest of the day went by without much excitement (fortunately). When we got home we discovered that Tasha (the dog that never goes after stuff on the counter) had decided to do some counter surfing and ate some blueberry muffins and Chanterelle mushrooms. Anyone that has a dog knows that horrible feeling of coming home, tired from the day, to find some kind of destruction. In any case, after cleaning everything up, we had a nice family dinner, some play time, and then got the kiddos ready for bed. By 9pm they were both asleep and Matt and I were able to hang out. We watched some TV and after I pumped (my favorite part of the day) we went to bed around 11:30pm.

Not five minutes after we turned off the lights I heard a thump and weird scratching noises. I ran out of the room to find Tasha collapsed in the TV room, flailing her legs. Once we got her to calmed down she became really lethargic, had labored breathing, and her gums became very, very pale. We were definitely worried. So we called the emergency vet number, and the doctor on call said he would meet us at his clinic. So Matt got dressed, de-iced the car, we carried Tasha to the car (and somehow made it without slipping in the ice rink), and he rushed her to the vet. And when I say rush, I mean drive as quickly as he could in the horrible icy conditions. (Have I mentioned that it was really icy and it sucked?)

My Tasha-roo <3

After checking her and running the tests that he could at the time, the vet thought Tasha might have Boxer cardiomyopathy - a condition so common in Boxers that it's named after the breed. He gave her some medicine to help her through the night and suggested that we either take her to the emergency vet clinic in TriCities (wasn't going to happen given the icy conditions) or check-in with our vet the next day. On Thursday we took her to the vet clinic & they kept her for the day for monitoring. At 4pm Dr. Ladderud called me to tell me that he didn't think that she had cardiomyopathy, but that they did an ultrasound and found that she had a tumor on her spleen. He thought that her collapse the night before was due to a small bleed or clot caused by the tumor, and they didn't think it would happen again anytime soon, but they will need to remove the tumor (and probably spleen). However, because she was still recovering from what had happened, her blood counts were too low to do surgery.

So we took her home Thursday night with some medicine that is supposed to help bring up her blood counts and might even help reduce the size of the tumor. That, and a million questions about the surgery and the recovery that I didn't get to ask because I was still in shock. So I will call tomorrow to talk to Dr. Ladderud, and hopefully get a little bit more clarity on what to expect. If all goes well, Tasha goes in for surgery Wednesday morning.

That night, as we were settling in for the night, Tasha had several accidents. I thought it might be due to the fact that she was on fluids all day Thursday, but when she continued having them on Friday I called the vet's office and got some incontinence medicine to help until the surgery. So she's on drugs and in diapers for now, and it is such a difficult situation. Half the time I'm frustrated at the mess and the amount of clean-up we're dealing with right now, and the other half of the time I want to sit down and cry because I'm freaking out about her health. I guess we just have to take it one day at a time right now... and we'll see what happens with surgery and post-surgery results.