The dog and I are falling apart

It's a little ironic that I didn't think I'd have anything to write about today. Our elderly stateshound Sarah has been feeling a bit under the weather lately. About a week and a half ago she was very constipated but when we got all that corrected, we got it corrected all over the living room floor. In amongst all of this, Sarah was drinking water constantly and peeing almost constantly. Needless to say the carpet steam cleaner has been getting a workout this week.

I checked the dog's blood sugar the other night and was relieved that it was only 81 mg/dL despite her thirst and frequent trips to the potty. While we would be one of the best candidates to handle a diabetic dog, I wasn't looking forward to all that maintenance since I have a hard enough time taking care of myself. The vet unfortunately couldn't get a urine sample from her while she was there so we were going to try again this week, but her blood work looked good.

By Sunday she started acting better. She hadn't peed in the house since Friday or so and everything started to seem a bit more normal. We gave the carpet one more good cleaning on Saturday night (that's our wild child-free nightlife; you should be jealous) and set the steam cleaner by the back door to go out to the shed.

After dinner tonight I started to work on some laundry for BlogHer and as I stepped into the laundry room I ran my bare right foot right into the steam cleaner. Hard. Like I yelled and tears came down my face immediately kind of hard. Shortly after that, Sarah pooped on the living room floor. The good news is she's not constipated anymore. Good thing I hadn't put the steam cleaner away yet (did I mention how much my foot hurts?). Within an hour of cleaning that mess up, I hopped back by the living room on my way to the kitchen and noticed she had peed on the floor and there was a significant amount of blood.

I hopped my way over to the scene and took a picture with my iPhone to show the vet (I'll spare you that gem on Flickr). We then debated taking her to the emergency vet at 10:30pm, particularly since I couldn't put any weight on my right foot without it shooting pain up my leg. For peace of mind, we opted to go to the vet.

According to the vet, Sarah has a bladder infection and probably passed a blood clot (who knew you could do that?). She also has the equivalent of a bad back for dogs in that her spinal gaps looks "narrow". So she's on three weeks of antibiotics (for $112.80) and an additional pain killer. The vet said her pain may also be affecting her ability to potty outside when she should if hunching over or walking is hurting her. The poor dog is too creaky to even go to the bathroom.

As for my foot, I don't think I broke my toes, but they sure do hurt like I did. They're not swollen or discolored but it still really hurts to put weight on them at all. I'm icing them as I type this and waiting for my own pain meds to kick in. Apparently Sarah isn't the only one with a bladder infection so I'm rocking the Macrobid and water and hoping I can fall asleep. Oh, and for unknown reasons my blood sugar skyrocketed from 208 to 321 while I was at the vet despite taking insulin. Hooray.

I can hear Sarah going for her fourth trip to get water since I started writing this so I should see if she can pee outside before we call it a night. Maybe I'll set an alarm to get up and let her out again. Or maybe I'll set an alarm and ask Rich nicely to take her out at 4am.

Through all of this, our dog has been a dream. She really has rallied from her pain in the ass beginnings 10 years ago to be such a stellar dog and I'd hate for her to be uncomfortable. I gave her a bath Sunday and while it now takes us about twice as long and she has to lie down for most of it, she's still very accommodating of the whole ordeal and loves the attention. Here's hoping we both feel better in the morning.