In a bubble

I’m sure most people have had situations where a loved one has some sort of health issue. Depending on the issue and the loved one, addressing that issue makes most other things in your daily routine seem somewhat trivial and lacking importance. That is how my weekend sort of felt where the focus was on getting Elsa eating, drinking and pooping normally. It seems like at this point, she is.

The vet has given me a total of 5 different bottles of pills. The only ones I have been giving her is one for the diarrhea and another which is an appetite stimulant. The running faucet that was her poop on Friday has stopped and she has had three or four solid BM’s since. She also has been eating regularly albeit due to my girlfriend cooking for her during the weekend, making chicken, rice, veggies and ground turkey among other things. It also isn’t as simple as just throwing down a bowl with food in it. We normally have to feed her some pieces of chicken by hand and then she will keep eating on her own. She also seems to like the freeze dried ultra expensive food I bought for her.

One of the things the vet advised was that we stopped at least for now giving her the med used to help with her incontinence problem, something she has been taking for well over a year. The end result of that is her having an accident in my bed the last two nights requiring me to throw the bedding into the laundry and redo the bed daily. I have an alternative medicine for incontinence coming as well as some washable absorbent pads that I could keep under her in the bed as well as dog diapers, yes dog diapers. One of these options hopefully will handle this issue.

However other than that Elsa has been acting pretty normal. We went for a couple walks and my girlfriends dog hung with her a bunch this weekend which she liked as well. She is scheduled to go back to the vet on Thursday to get her numbers checked again. The blood test on Friday revealed her numbers had climbed some but I am not surprised since they were taken the morning after a night of diarrhea and throwing up twice. I am hopeful if we can keep her eating and drinking normally that her numbers will normalize more. I do think however that she clearly has some degree of kidney dysfunction, it’s just a matter of how well it can be managed.

Like I mentioned I was sort of in an Elsa bubble all weekend. It wasn’t hard to want to stay home with her as it has been bitterly cold by Florida standards. I walked outside this morning to temps in the 30s. I got my base chores done this weekend and dug into leveling more characters in WoW to level 80, the starting point for the new expansion that drops soon. I now have a system in place that allows me to go from 70-80 in roughly an hour, which is kind of nuts. I now have 5 or 6 characters up to 80 and will speed level the rest as I can. It is fun for me as they have simplified the game for me to the point where after a few mouse clicks I can get up and running with a character without having to set up and learn all of my abilities in depth. I am sure purists don’t like this but for me, it’s great.

So the other unknown in Elsa’s condition is how much help I will get from the pet insurance carrier I have. I recently switched in December because the old carrier made some ridiculous changes in their coverage terms. I am hoping the new provider doesn’t require me to fight them tooth and nail for every charge. In the span of a week of care I have racked up some pretty incredible bills already. Sure, I can afford to pay them but I really hope the insurance reimburses me partially to dull the financial pain a bit.