December 9, 2009

Apollo Drama! Part One

I try to not make this blog an All-About-Apollo extravaganza, but given the events of past three days, it seems appropriate right now.

Short version: Apollo got sick - seriously sick. We don't know what caused it, but it looks like he's on the mend now.

Here's the long, drawn out, gory details. Who knows, maybe this will help someone if this happens to their dog.

On Sunday morning, I woke to Apollo looking pretty miserable. I have no idea how long he was feeling that way, or if he tried to wake me. I sleep so soundly that it's pretty difficult to wake me. I feel guilty about that, but 'nuff said on that. Anyway, he would only walk a few feet, then lie down for a few minutes. He refused to eat. I thought, because he kept laying down, that he had jumped off the bed during the night and injured himself. "That's ok, it's just a back strain, if he doesn't get better, we'll go to the vet tomorrow," I remember thinking.

Thinking that it was just a sore back, I let him mope around all day, and went to bed as usual. During the night, the poor hairy guy vomited a few times. Again, didn't wake. In the morning, I found a few piles, and started deliberating on whether to take him to the Vet or wait it out. I had given Apollo a raw egg recently, and thought maybe it had upset his stomach.

Monday:
When he vomited water, that cinched it. I called the vet clinic we had gone to last summer, I liked them. The vet, who we'll call Betty, was naturally concerned, but felt it was minor. She recommended a wait-and-see with some light medicine to help the pain. She offered to do an x-ray to be on safe side. I agreed to the x-ray. It showed that there was a very large gas bubble in his colon.

That made us concerned, and when I saw the x-ray, I realized that Apollo's wanting to lay down was probably due to this, not a back injury. The vet wanted to see if the gas was moving along so she suggested another set of x-rays 2 hours later; I suspected it wasn't, because it was pretty close to his stomach, and it'd been at least 24 hours since the onset.

I'm really glad that I work from home; it gave me the flexibility of dealing with all this. Two hours later, we took another set of x-rays, and it showed that the gas bubble was moving but very slowly. Betty suggested wait-and-see, she thought that with anti-nausea medicine to help keep the food down, Apollo's gas bubble would move along with food's help.

That night, I slept on the floor with Apollo, keeping one hand on him so that if he got up, I'd definitely know. He didn't budge all night. I think he was exhausted from the ordeal.

To be continued tomorrow.

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