Tough Times

Savannah and I are "hooked" on latch hooking (pun intended)! We are having so much fun with our kits:





Today has been a hard day. I didn't sleep well last night again (which is happening too much these days), which resulted in a late start this morning. However, we still started before 9am so that's not too bad. But at 10 I had to call the vet (will tell you about that in a minute) and got an appointment for Goldie at 10:20 so we had to leave for that. We only got 2 small things done for school before that point. Our vet appt. ended up taking longer than we expected and Savannah was too emotional to be with us so we took her to my friend's house (who also homeschools and kindly included Savannah in some of their learning) while we stayed with Goldie. By the time we got home and started school again, Savannah was distracted, tired, and not at all in "school mode". So right now she is resting and working on her latch hook kit while I type this. I was getting angry at her and she was frustrated and not listening to me (not in a defiant way but in a way where she wasn't learning anything so what was the point?). I'm not sure how to handle days like this because I don't want to just quit and communicate to her that 1.) her attitude will determine whether we will school that day, or 2.) that it's okay to quit when things are hard or when you can't concentrate, or are tired, or distracted, etc. It's only our 3rd week so I know it's going to take some time to figure this all out. I just want to make the right decisions so I don't end up regretting our decision to homeschool.

Now, why we had to take Goldie to the vet...

We started her on a new medication on Friday for arthritis. (She is a 12 and a half year old Golden Retriever.) By Sunday she was falling over, couldn't stand very long on her back legs without either falling over or laying down, was very lethargic, wouldn't eat and was drinking very little. The bottle said the medicine might make her dizzy so I thought that's all it was...just dizziness. But it was pretty bad so I called the vet. They said to reduce the dosage for about a week until she got used to it. I skipped one dose and then gave her half a pill on Monday morning. (She seemed to be feeling better that morning so I wasn't too worried about giving it to her again.) Last night she had a rough night (kept falling over when she would try to get comfortable), and today she has been lethargic, can't stand for very long without falling over or losing her balance, isn't eating still and barely drinking. I called the vet this morning to see if I should bring her in. They said those symptoms were NOT typical with the medication she was taking. So we took her in and the vet said they needed x-rays to check out her hips and see if she had a spinal tumor causing nerve damage. He suspected the problem to be neurological vs. medication side effects. He said he gives out that medication several times a day and has never seen a problem. So we went to the vet's sister office because their x-ray machines are newer and better. The vet there said it COULD be the medicine but he wasn't sure so they would still do the x-rays. The x-rays didn't show anything, which is good and bad. Good that there isn't a spinal tumor, but bad because there's still a strong possibility that she has a brain tumor.

We suspected a brain tumor about 2 months ago when she started having seizures. She is 12 years old...when seizures start at that age, it's usually not epilepsy...more likely a brain tumor or some other serious condition. We did not test for it because the cause doesn't determine the treatment. It would be a waste of money to know what's causing the seizures because at her age, we wouldn't do surgery anyway. We would just medicate, which we are doing now. And now with these new symptoms, it just doesn't look good. However, we are hopeful it's the new medication because it would otherwise be a very strange coincidence that this started as she started a new medication.

We are waiting until tomorrow afternoon (Wed.) to see if she has improved. If not, we will take her in for blood work to see if it might be something else. If she starts improving by tomorrow then everything will be fine. So we just wait and pray. It has only been 4 months since Lady Belle died. We aren't ready for this. (No one is ever READY for this, but you know what I mean.) Savannah is having a hard time with this, as are Tim and I. Your prayers are appreciated.

Good night. I'm hoping tonight will be a better night for both Goldie and me. But I'm pretty doubtful.