Happy Veterans Day!

Happy Veterans Day everybody! Time to reflect on the sacrifices that have been made throughout our country's history to get us this far.

If you came here expecting a big post about Veterans day, well, I'm afraid you've been gypped.

You see, for now I'm done on that topic (and no, I'm NOT going to rant on and on this year about how Jeannie gets to sleep in while I the VETERAN gets to get up and go to work like I usually do). You see, Jeannie WILL be getting up early herself this year. But for the details on that you need 'the rest of the story", and that involved PG (because EVERYTHING in our house right now involves PG).

THIS is the rest of the story. It's the 11-11-12 afternoon PG update.

All is well! (and right now that's as good as we can ask for!) She's still wearing "the cone of Shame" (and so am I for that matter). You see, last Thus night during my 2am medical wake-up, I had taken off the cone, dissolved the very last of the dreaded 'drink it' medications (med #4 in our list of 6) in the water, loaded the hypodermic and even managed to get most of it down her gullet. Then I thought I'd give her a break, figuring she will sleep the next 2 hours (I still had a 4am wake-up med to do).

SO..I left off the cone and went back to sleep. And you know the ol' saying: no good deed goes unpunished. I get up at 4am and lo and behold, she did not sleep. No, she started licking the sutures. And somehow, over half of them were now MIA. Just gone. The nice flat (perfect) suture line now was half-way inflamed, the cut skin edges looked like lasagne noodles (all wavy). I felt HORRIBLE! The surgeon is going to SKIN ME ALIVE! However, it's been going on 9 full days since her surgery, so the cut didn't open up. It just doesn't look so 'purty' now. Thankfully we didn't need to take her to the vet to be re-sewn.

So now I'm wearing a virtual cone of shame. Jeannie will take PG down to Ventura tomorrow for her post-surgical followup with the Surgeon. Why is Jeannie taking her instead of me you ask? Well...it IS Veterans Day as you know, and being as she has it off for no other reason than being a Govy worker (THUS ending her amazing string of SLEEPING IN on Veterans days), while I will be working. So the duty of being PG's limo falls to her this time around. And there is a bonus for me: at least I won't be there in person to get thrown under the bus about the missing stitches (as she most assuredly will fling the blame on me, and I don't blame her one bit cuz it was totally me). Also thankfully, in the last few days the ruffled edges have laid down pretty nice and it looks just like the rest, only with no stitches. I'm sure the remaining stitches will come out tomorrow...so my verbal bashing won't be quite so bad I hope. I think her appt is at 10am...so I'll see if I feel like my ears are burning around then.

Anyway, our little angel/devil is doing pretty good, though I have to say she is overall a lousy patient. We go thru a LOT to get her to take her 5 remaining meds...it usually starts out easy, and typically finishes hard (much like Ike and Tina Turner's version of Rolling on the River). If only she would just EAT the blasted fresh piece of chicken (with said pill tucked inside somewhere). But nooooo...she's gotta sniff it, and gently take it, then chew it a few times and BAM, the pill falls out and she finishes the chicken. She only gets one chance with me anymore...then I pick up the pill, PRY her jaws open, force the pill to the back of her throat while holding her head up high, then hold the jaws shut until she swallows it. We do this OVER and OVER and OVER. I'd have thought she'd figure it out and just EAT IT the first time. I think she's just REALLY stubborn.

But other than that it's all going well. We'll know more tomorrow after the followup with the surgeon. We also hope to have a sit-down with our local vet and develop the "plan" for what to do with the cancer. Jeannie's and my thoughts on that are that we will do our very best to treat it with diet...seeing if we can keep it at bay. The Surgeon even admitted it might have been in there for some time, and only due to the bleeding was it discovered. So if we cut out all the sugars (which we have) we will see how she does. We have no intention of putting her thru the radiation, nor letting them take the leg (unless that somehow becomes the prudent thing to do). She's 11 years old in just a few weeks, and we will go from here doing the very best we can. That is our basic plan. Subject to modification at any time of course.

Happy Monday!