Polly Balboa

Things got dicey, and a bit gamey, during the power outage but a week later we’re back to the grind.

Here’s the medical:

Renee is doing well. She’s still adjusting to the bag and to managing her meals but she looks great! She gets worn out quickly from simple household chores and the runaround mom thing but she’s making real progress. It was hard to tell last week without light and heat how much better she’s doing but now that the power is back you can really tell. It’s in her face. I’ve lived with her for almost 23 years and she looks like a different person.

The whole allergy shot reaction is behind her. It was probably a good thing that the lights were out while she recovered from that incident. The doctor said that they’ll reduce her dose and if she gets another systemic reaction she’s done with allergy shots for good.

The cardiologists visit went well, no signs of lingering problems. The hospital heart scare looks like it was all due to the post-op infection.

The gastroenterologist also says Renee’s doing well. They talked about the next operations. (There will be two.) He highlighted the negative side, noting that the muscles that were used for those functions are now dormant. He doesn’t want her thinking that everything is going to be normal especially immediately following the second procedure. Unfortunately, normal is no longer an option. What you do get hopefully is tolerable. We're hoping for a three hundred percent improvement from where Renee was at pre-surgery but frequency will never return to healthy colon standards. The doc's J-Pouch failed and I think he really wants to prepare her for the possibility. He also wants to prepare her for the discharge re-training and accidents that go along with it.

Yes, sometime in the fall I’ll be house training the wife. I wonder if I’ll have to spread newspapers?

Cassidy has recovered from her fever and ear infection and returned to school last Tuesday along with the rest of the county. She ended up only missing a half a day officially, but five and a half in total.

Cassidy also had a doctor visit with the endocrinologist. Only a half inch in height gain since last visit but at least her growth line is no longer flat. They upped the dosage of growth hormone again. We’ve now topped out the needle. We’ll have to get larger syringes if they increase again. I’m trying to get her to inject herself but she’s still reluctant to even look at what I’m doing.

Polly had a great time in the cold and snow. I brought her outside as much as possible through the outage week. I would also walk her without the leash since my arms weren’t long enough to reach to her comfort spots from the skinny lane cleared for cars. Last Sunday warmed up to above fifty degrees. It was sunny and just a good day to be outside. Polly was out roaming the frozen lawn while I scraped and shoveled the driveway. A neighbor came by with her dog on the leash and stopped to chat. Polly had been horsing around with a visiting puppy and the pup stopped to check out the leashed canine. Polly snuck out in the street to say hello also.

Ruffruffruffruffruff, bark, snarl, growl, snap …aarr..aarrf.

Polly was ordered back to the lawn but had already caught the worst of it. There was blood dripping from beneath her eye. I rubbed snow on the wound which looked like it needed stitches. The left side of her face was swelling and her eye closing up. She started slinking back toward the street and the other dog and she stared up at me while I tried to apply more snow to ease the pain and swelling. “Cut me Mick,” I think she said. She wanted to go another round. But Cassidy was crying and Renee was calling the vet and the other owner was just itching for a way to gently ease herself out of this awkward situation. She gracefully offered to pay the vet bill, saw her opening and moved on.

The vet opened her shop for us on Superbowl Sunday. We quickly got Polly corralled and in the car. No stitches, she glued the skin together. She gave us some antibiotics and told us to place warm compresses on the area. The worst part of the bite was just under the eye and there were no scratches on the cornea so the mutt was lucky. She’ll have a scar but she’s healing nicely.

Everything's calmed down to the routine level of chaos that goes on in the house. So this week all is good. We’re going to try for two in a row but I don’t want to push it. Things can explode around here pretty quickly.