Day 1239 – 1245. Monday 8th Sep to Sunday 14th Sep 2008

I am sorry this must make for depressing reading. I wouldn’t have thought things could have got worse, but they have.

Sunday night saw Elsa get very poorly. Elsa is one of our 2 German Shepherds. Bonnie is the rough and loud one, Elsa is the meek, puppy dog eyes one who has a face to die for. So, when something is wrong with Elsa, you feel very sorry for her, because she has THAT look !

Karen :- If anything happens to Elsa, I don’t know how I will cope

I was really concerned, because kp is so low, and it would be just our luck for something to happen.

German Shepherds are known for their weak backends, and Elsa (at 8 years old) has a weak backend, but nothing that stops her enjoying her walks etc etc…..Unfortunately, she had done something to her front left leg which meant she couldn’t put ANY weight on it all. With a weak backend, she was having problems walking AT ALL. We very nearly called the emergency vet out (it was that bad). But given monday morning was only 12 hours away, we thought she could hang on until then. We took her for the first free appointment and they asked us to bring her back the next day for x-rays. We felt somewhat reassured.

The following day she had the x-rays and we went to pick her up. The vet explained that there was no break and although there was a black area which could indicate bone cancer (Her blood sister Cleo had bone cancer) that they weren’t worried about that. What was clear was that she had bad arthritis in her elbow. With tablets and some antibiotics for a temperature, we took her home.

Thankfully, by the end of the week, she was like a new dog and she is so much better. The bad news, Bonnie is now bad.

She was a bit subdued yesterday, and today she has been off food (UNBELIEVABLE for Bonnie) and wasn’t really fussed with the walk.

We went for an afternoon snooze and when we got up, we were greeted by a pool of blood (which we think has come out of her backend).

So, vets again tomorrow. What’s weird is that both dogs have been fine for years (no vets visits). Because we are going away soon and they are staying at a new kennels, we had to get them vaccinated, and all of this has happened within a week of the vaccination. Probably coincidence, but a bit weird !!!

Back to kp. Needless to say, that none of this helped the kp situation, but things weren’t heading in the right direction anyway !

There is _some_ good news. kp is doing BRILLIANTLY at dropping down her medications. She has got Tamazepam (highly addictive sleeping tablet) down to 10mg per night (down from 40-60mg per night)). PLUS !!! Her opiate-based pain patches (Fentanyl) are down from 600mg to 525mg. Interestingly, we did go down to 525mg before, but we did so in a sudden decrease and kp couldn’t tolerate the pain, whereas this time it has been VERY gradual, probably taking 2-3 months to get down to 525mg. So WELL DONE kp !!

So, what’s happened this week….(apart from the vets trips)….

Monday and it was a MDT (Multi-disciplinary team) meeting. This was one where the lawyers weren’t there, just all the health professionals.

That went well, and it was clear that kp was still making good progress !

She had 10 hours sleep the night before, so things bode well.

Monday night and kp had an awful nightmare. She occasionally has humdingers of nightmares, and this was one of those. It takes a lot to wake me, but kp was screaming…..

kp:- Stop It, Stop it STOP IT !!!!!!!!! (really sobbing). David, they’re torturing me, they’re torturing ME!!!!!!!!!!!!

And she just kept repeating similar things. Now, when I wake up to this, I, of course, immediately try and get her awake, but I just couldn’t ! She was locked in this dreaming sleep mode. It was quite frightening and upsetting. I was REALLY shouting to try and get her awake but in the end, I had to shout louder than her and it woke her up. For about 45 minutes, we talked about other things to try and calm her down. It was awful.

I am pleased to say it was the only nightmare this week. kp does a lot of sleep talking (which she never used to do, bizarrely) in her sleep as well, so I have bought a voice-activated digital tape recorder to record some of these episodes so I can play them to Karen. I have tried it out for the last few sleeps, and although I have plenty of snoring, I only have one episode of sleep talking and not a very good one at that. But, as soon as I have a good one, I’ll post it on t’blog.

Tuesday was the day Karen had another HiMat assessment. It’s a physio thing, where they record various activities and time them. I can’t remember the scores specifically, but I do know it was an improved score on the last HiMat assessment, which is great.

The further along the week went, the worse kp’s sleep went. An example would be Tuesday when kp went to sleep from 1am to 2am, 7-9.30am. So, that’s 3.5 hours sleep. It makes for such a horrid life for her ! Wednesday was her day off, and she did nowt but watch TV, despite me trying to do my support worker stint (in the absence of a real one) and motivate her.

Thursday, Joanne (physio) came to loosen kp’s left arm and shoulder and then we both went to see our psychologists.  I go into mine first so I can join Karen’s for the last 15 minutes. Mine went great and we are now putting them on hold until I feel I need another one. I feel very positive (despite everything going on) and in a good position to support kp, which is great and a lot of it is down to these sessions, so money well spent !! When I joined kp’s session, things were very different. kp was upset, and neither of us can remember what about. There were lots of tears on the way home too, and I do remember we went to sleep hugging each other and woke up still hugging, but that’s all I remember !

Friday and another physio session with Steve.

The weekend has been pretty awful. Despite my best motivational efforts, kp has done only 1 dog walk with me and that’s all she has done (aside watch TV). She is even worse (mood-wise) than last week and there have been a few tears.

She did have a couple of glimmers at some point during the week, where there was a bit of positivity. We are both hoping that there will be a few more.

She is so desperate for the sleep to be sorted, and I feel sure if she could be on top of the sleep, then things would improve ! We have a plan anyway. She is going to take 40mg Tamazepam at 3am this morning (monday) and that should get her to sleep. I’ll get her up and we have arranged a full day and hopefully that will correct her sleeping pattern. We are then going to keep her busy each day.

As always…………..Fingers crossed !

No Responses to “Day 1239 – 1245. Monday 8th Sep to Sunday 14th Sep 2008”

  1. No comments posted yet

Comments are closed.







. Page Hits View Stats