Big Dog, Pig Dog

An update for today:

Sam ate some brown rice and hot dogs last night, not a ton–maybe 2/3 cup of rice and 1 Oscar Meier Classic Wiener (<—as we have mentioned before, ONLY Oscar Meier Classic Wieners are acceptable), but it was something, which made me feel a bit better.

Out of curiosity, I tracked his respiration last night throughout the evening, to see if it was as fast as it seemed. At times, he was taking upwards of 72+ breaths/minute, so almost double what it should be. (This was at rest–ostensibly asleep/dozing) The lowest I counted it was in the 40s.

This morning, there was no convincing him to eat–not even hot dogs and rice. He took a milkbone as I went out the door, but nothing else. He also had his back legs go out from under him (partly b/c he is using the one rear less and less, and partly b/c I cannot touch his feet anymore to cut his toe poufters super short, which doesn’t help…they are trimmed, but could be shorter, if I could get at them), and instead of getting up, just kind of looked in a panic.

Those things, coupled with his general demeanor this morning led me to think maybe I needed to do more than just call the vet today with a general check-in/shoot the shit call and let him know I upped the pred and tramadol.

I broached the idea of taking Sam in for films to Pat, and he agreed…it would probably be worth the cost and seemed a logical idea (engineers…they all need those “rational, cost-benefit explanations” :p). It worries me a bit whenevr Pat agrees to stuff like this, b/c it usually means things are worse than they appear–I am on one end of reactionary; he is on the other.

Anyway, I called this AM and let them know we’d be in this afternoon (Sadie needs a nail trim anyway…she has Badger Claws. We are almost to the adamantium level. If she weren’t such a selfish, needy thing, she’d be the newest superhero do-gooder ). If we do films/labs, and they show that no, the lung mets aren’t substantial and there are no mets to the spine or other limbs/organs, that will be excellent. Then we know we can keep managing things with OTC stuff, his accupuncture, etc. Keep on, keeping on. OTOH, if we go in, and we see substantial mets, etc., things are that without a doubt what is causing his discomfort…well, then we need to come up with a different plan. But I DO think, at this point, yes…we need to know to really make the best choices for Sampson.

So there is our update! Hopefully, we will have some answers this evening