Found It!

The camera, that is. It's been lost for over a week now, but Ben found it last night!!! Where did it go? Behind the couch... not sure how, as the couch is nice and snug up to the wall... I wouldn't be surprised if the pups had something to do with it... hmmm...

I've been meaning to take a picture of the Minsters to show off her improvement!!! That's right, folks, we had a miraculous recuperation! One day our Minmin was still open-mouthed and unable to eat/drink on her own and then all of a sudden she was again! We can tell she hasn't regained all of her strength with regards to chewing (she has a hard time with Greenies still) but at least her mouth can shut now and she's gone back to eating and drinking on her own!!!

Her mouth is just a wee bit open in this one, but this is amazing compared to how she was 3 weeks ago. Imagine hanging ALL the way open with her tongue falling out the side... poor girl.

Something else I'd wanted to take a picture of was my newest creation! I haven't sewed in a long time due to being so busy with work/school/Seminary but about a month ago I got myself a brand new set of scriptures and decided I wanted to make myself a cute little church tote, since the one I have is falling apart. It took me a while, but I finally finished it and am pleased with how it turned out. I had forgotten how fun sewing could be, especially when you don't know what the heck you're doing!!! :)

Voltaren... might as well be a city full of vampires!

A few months ago I posted that due to some recent clumsiness, Ben had nicknamed me "Bella" and this past week I have definitely lived up to it.... again. After just 2 weeks I managed to land myself in the ER once more today. Over the weekend I slipped and fell at Ben's parent's house (rain+ crazy little dog running circles around me= disaster!) and hurt my knee. Last night we went to Mercy After-hours to get it checked out b/c it was killing me and was swollen/bruised etc. Turns out it is sprained, how nice. So I'm in a brace and on crutches with a referral to do some PT for it for a few weeks. Simple enough right? Well, yes... but when you're Alex (or Bella) nothing is ever that simple.

I had to go and have an adverse reaction to the pain meds/NSAIDs they gave me last night, pass out in the bathroom at work today(can you say embarrassing?!?! Nothing like coming to surrounded by a bunch of people freaking out), and land myself in the ER again. Ben took me to the doctor and my blood pressure was all over the place so he sent me straight there. The offending meds? Tramadol + Voltaren (I couldn't remember the name and kept calling it Volterra, though no one other than Ben thought it was funny!) Guess I won't ever be taking those again...

Seriously... why does this stuff always happen to me?!?! I know I can't get an Edward out of this, but how about an Alice? Is that too much to ask? Everyone can use a little Alice in their lives, no? At least then I'd know when danger was coming and could avoid it...well, maybe... :)

Idiopathic Trigeminal Neuritis

So... definitely not a bee sting. :( Min-min had her followup today and for all intents and purposes she is still the same. The vet thought he felt a weeeeeeeee bit of resistance in her jaw when doing some neurological tests, but not much. The general consensus is that she has whats called Idiopathic Trigeminal Neuritis. Idiopathic = no one knows why it happens, or as our vet jokingly put it, "because we're idiots and can't figure it out!" Trigeminal neuritis = inflamation of the trigeminal nerve which in her case is causing the paralysis.

Final prognosis is uncertain. ITN can be temporary and linger for about 2-4 weeks... OR it can be permanent. We have no way of telling which one of these fates awaits our Minsters. I guess only time will tell... For now we are to keep her on her meds, keep feeding her and watering her through the syringes, and pray like the dickens that she gets better... She's already starting to look skinnier to me, so I'm not sure how long she'd last if this were permanent, unless she were to get a feeding tube for the rest of her life... she's only 5, so that would be a very long and miserable existance... Just trying to remain positive and cross that bridge when we get to it... hopefully we won't have to though.

I have a feeling she will be the talk of this blog for some time to come... I'll update as we have progress... or not. Thanks for the kind words, thoughts, and prayers!

Our Minsters of Magic isn't feeling very magical right now...

When it rains it pours, huh? This has been a rough week for us Youngs... First with me in the ER and my upcoming surgery, then our plumbing leaks everywhere, and now Mini. Last night I noticed that she was holding her mouth open kinda funny and her tongue was just lolling out. She was just sitting there like that, drooling! Not just a little doggy slobber, but drooooooooooooooling, long strands of it just running down her face and onto the floor. Upon closer inspection I realized she was foaming at the mouth and couldn't seem to be able to control her tongue much. I freaked... Ben was on his way home and so I googled "dog foaming at the mouth" and found a bunch of scary stuff, other than rabies (which we know isn't a possibility b/c she is up to date on her shots). So at 10PM we whisk her away to Neel Veterinary Hospital to see what was up. A lot of the websites suggested frog/toad poisoning, which we were sure was the case because she loves to chase/pounce on them in our yard. Three hours later (yeah, it was a long night in the doggy ER) the doctors were stumped. Not poisoning, X-Rays looked fine, they sedated her to scope her mouth and throat and there was no foreign body stuck anywhere, etc. As far as they could tell it was neurological because after doing a bunch of "pinch tests" they determined that she has very little to no sensation in her face/muzzle/mouth. They put her on Prednisone(for inflammation) and Tramadol (in case she was in pain) and we made a recheck appt for 2 weeks out. We brought her home, gave her some meds, and went to bed.

This morning she woke up a whole lot worse. She tried unsuccessfully (for about 15-20 minutes) to eat breakfast but all she managed to do was drool/slobber/foam all over her bowl... I doubt she got more than 5 kibbles down her throat. I tried getting her to drink but she couldn't do anything other than get water all on her face but none stayed in her mouth and just ran out the sides... Ben was at work and I just started panicking... I called our regular Vet, Dr.Mauldin, and they had us bring her right over. He did more pinch tests and she didn't react all the way down to her neck. He said that in his 18 years of practice he's only seen this twice and we're looking at 3 possibilities: 1) she got stung by a bee in the mouth and that's causing the paralysis (only neither Vet was able to find a stinger or any site of a sting... no swelling, redness, etc) 2) A degenerative auto-immune disease (meaning it would get worse) or 3) a tumor pressing on her Trigeminal nerve which would require brain surgery.

We are hoping and praying this is just a sting, as the latter two will lead to needing to make a difficult decision... our Vet is usually very chipper and optimistic, but he told us we should start thinking about how far we want/are monetarily able to continue with this if its not just a simple bee sting. So we set up a followup for Tuesday, they gave us some syringes to feed her with, and we headed off to PetSmart to buy her some canned food. We have to make her a "slurry" of food and water so we can feed it to her through the syringes, since she is unable to feed herself. It's so heartbreaking to watch, since other than her face she is healthy and happy and still her usual bumbling self... But when you see her unable to eat and drink, reality sets in and we just sat there and had ourselves a good long cry with her. These next few days will be crucial and telling of whats to come...

I know this may sound weird (especially to those of you that don't have dogs or aren't "pet people") but we don't have kids and our pups are our babies. It was a rough start with Mini, she was one screwed up dog when we first got her, but here we are 4 years later and she is just the sweetest thing ever. She is so gentle and cuddly and obedient. She's gotten to be really good around the kiddos and just loves life... Any prayers on her behalf would be welcome... we're just not ready to let her go just yet... :`(

Seriously?!?!

So Percocet and Phenegran make for a very sleepy Alex, which doesn't exactly mix well with getting behind the wheel of a car and driving to work, right? No worries, I haven't been driving under the influenec of narcotics people, come on now! (I'm an insurance agent, really!) Anyway, so I muscled my way through work today sans-happy meds and it just wasn't cool. The pain I have become accustomed to grinning and baring it, but the pukes? Not...so...much... Talked to my doc today and he called me in 3 more meds, one of which was the much loved Zofran everyone raves about. He says its supposed to work really well (better than Phenegran) without putting me to sleep. The catch? It's expensive!!! So he called me in the generic to help with costs. Hooray, right? Riiiiiiiiiiiight... until I see how many 15 pills cost me! (Mind you they only gave me 15 but really the supply is supposed to be 90. This will make sense in a minute.) $70 for 15 pills!!! I was told the full 90 would run me another $150....eeeek, thank goodness for our FSA...phew!

Oh wells, hopefully these little golden pills will be worth it. At the very least make the next few weeks a bit more bearable until my surgery, which in theory *should* make my life a lot more bearable! :) The exact date is still a bit fuzzy, but that should get squared away here pretty soon. Hooray for modern medicine and itty bitty little incisions! :)

Paying my dues

I had to go to the ER today and unfortunately got an EMT student assigned to put in a line. I could tell that he was nervous when he started grabbing the wrong kind of needles and preparing to flush the line before even putting it in, lol. So I tried to chit-chat with him while he went about preparing to torture me, but sure enough the poor guy kinda botched it up and soon I was looking down at a bunch of blood running down my arm onto the sheets, gurney, and floor. "I wasn't prepared for so much blood!" he kept saying. A nurse came in and quickly helped him finish, cleaned me up, and got me new sheets so that I wouldn't have to lay in my blood, lol! Poor guy, he felt so bad, but I told him I was a nursing student and would some day be in his shoes too, so no worries. I wonder how many times I'll botch up my IV lines... I feel bad for my future victims!