Moving right along...

ok, I'm over it now :) I'm moving on...onwards and upwards, right?! The good thing is, that girl lives out by State College so I never have to see her and if it gets to be too much I'll defriend her on facebook. (she's hardly ever on) and maybe her sister too. I tried to get back into touch with both of them through facebook (and other means over the years) but it wasn't really well received and to be honest I don't really feel like there's anything missing in my life or any real reason I should till be friends with them, so maybe I will just defriend.
decisions, decisions.

In other news, it looks like we might finally get more snow then Philly in this next storm. It seems this winter the areas south of us have actually gotten a lot more snow then we have which is very bizzare. I'm planning on taking some work home with myself today just in case I can't make it into work tomorrow. I almost hate taking another vacation day due to snow but really, at this point, I just hate driving in it so much that it's not even worth it. The good thing is I can start diving into my gardening books this weekend. I got some seed packets from a seed exchange my CW participates in and she let me pick some stuff out and wouldn't take any money from - So I cannot wait for spring when I can get these in the ground!!! :) Last year I took some pics of my gardens on March 5th and I had some sprouts just starting from some of my bulbs.

 this March 5th my gardens are going to be under a foot of snow or more :( I just can't wait to see some color and green life emerging from the grossness.
Here's the same spot in full bloom (April 18th) :)

Unfortunately I have a lot junk in this spot right now left over from our sewer/deck project last year so I'll have a lot of cleaning out to do after the snow melts - So I have no idea what, if anything has survived. But the good thing is I planted a ton of other bulbs last fall so I should have flowers coming up in ALL my gardens :)

Bitter Betty

...and I don't really care. I found out that a girl who is 4 years younger then me, I used to babysit her for crying out loud (her sister was my childhood best friend and a year younger then me) is pregnant. yup. that would be my heart under those tractor trailer tires over there. Now I have now idea about her path to get here, Lord only knows if her and her H of 1.5 years were trying or not but really - to be perfectly honest I don't really care. It's just not fair. it's not. I was upset, angry and yes even bitter and jealous when her sister (my ex-best friend) got married before me, got pregnant before me and now has 2 daughters, but now even her sister is passing me, even her little sister is getting what I've been dreaming about for years. SUCKS.

yeah I know this doesn't take anything away from my own chances. I get it. But right now I'm pretty fucking angry about it.

I'm not sitting in a corner crying about it, I'm not curled up around a tub of ice cream surrounded by a sea of snotty tissues, I'm not getting trashed....I'm not sad. I'm angry. I'm pissed. I'm jealous. And I'm not sorry about it.

sometimes things get better and sometimes they don't.

Well the dog is doing Wonderfully!! as of this morning he took his pills in hot dog pieces, and by "took" I mean he wolfed those suckers right down! (last night he wouldn't eat the pieces with the pills in them but he ate all the others. And since we didn't have any other people out for him he ate some of his fancy new grain-free dog food right out of his bowl! He has not eaten any "undoctored" dog food out of his bowl since Christmas so this is HUGE!!!!! :) I just could not be happier!

I have been doing a ton of research on dog food as a result of his new diet and I even visited the pet board on the Nest (it's like a freaking cult in there, watch out!). I always knew there was "good" dog food and "bad" dog food but damn they get all fired up at the commercially available food for dogs - don't even think to mention Purina or Alpo on there. damn. Anyway...I knew better and did not bring up what he was eating but I did want to get feed back on enteritis and grain free food. A couple really nice girls answered, one wants me to abandoned my vet and take him to a holistic vet...yeah, um no. But no one really had any info,but that's oaky, I did get to read some fun drama on my littel trip over there. Anyway...I did find a very interesting link in my research Dog Food Analysis.
It's not a complete list of every dog food out there but it's still pretty good. I picked up Canidae Grain Free All Life Stages (ALS) for druppy to try out. it's rated 5 stars and I don't think it'll break the bank so I hope he likes it! I got a 5 lb bag for $11 but the 30 lb bag is $38. This is almost double what we were paying for his old food, but we were feeding him 2 cups a day (I'm not sure of the calorie content). The new stuff has 500 calories in 1 cup and that's the vet told us he'll need to maintain his weight at 30lbs. so if we can get away feeding him 1 cup (or just slightly more) per day it'll end up being a wash in the end.

And no less then a half an hour after my last post guess who showed up - up the old hag herself. oh well, I just had to laugh at how I just jinxed myself and went on with my day. I hate to say it but we've been so distracted with the dog I really didn't care that I wasn't pg. It kinda puts things in perspective and shifted my priorities a little bit. plus we have like no extra money laying right now thanks to the vet bills so we're pulling the purse strings a little tighter these days. It sucks but hey, nothing we can do about it.

But my e-friend Cathy did say I should make a blog post that says "I Will get pg this cycle" and maybe that whole jinxing thing will work again - It's worth a shot, right?! :) maybe I should say "I don't want to get pg anymore"...think that'll work? Too bad I can't even say that with a straight face...I never was very good at lying!

Diagnosis (for the dog, not me, haha)

Hopefully this will be the last update I have to do about my dog for awhile aside from announcing he's totally back to normal, which may or may not happen so this could be it for a while.

I took him to get his stitches out last night and hopefully get some news about the biopsy results. From the minute the vet mentioned cancer I just truly did not believe that he had cancer. And I was Right!! :) There was no evidence of cancer in the lab work. Unforunately the lab LOST his lymph node tissue sample so we only get 2/3rds of the results. The Vet is pisssssssseeeddd off! She credited the $$ of that biospy to my account (not even 5% of the total surgery bills, but whatever) but she knows she sent 3 samples to to the lab and they are claming the lymph tissue sample was missing. she thinks they dumped it out of the vial (it was a small sample) but she can't prove it.

Anyway, the liver came back with mild chronic hepatitis, which basically just means a minor infection and not really the cause of the problems. The Intestine biospy came back with enteritis. there were quite a few $0.25 medical terms in there too that our mdeical committee - my mom and  MIL are both nurses - dumbed down for us to mean a high number of white blood cells were present and enteritis just means an inflammation. Duh! haha

There are a few possible causes, one of which is bacterial overgrowth, which is not the cause in this case since the problem did not respond to the anitbiotics he's been on for almost a month now. It could be dietary incompatibility so he's now on a grain free diet (no more pizza crusts or pita chips for him!) and it just be an autoimmune fluke so he's on prednisone for the long term. This will hopefully supress the immune system and knock down the inflammation. It could cause gastric ulcers so he's on an antacid too. But the side effect we're hoping for is an increase in appetite! That would be awesome! :) he's down to 24 lbs, but I truly hope that's as low as he gets. He needs about 500 calories per day and to be honest we were lucky if we were getting 300-400 in him up till this point. we're going to double the amount of baby food we syringe feed him during the day since he can't have bread products which is what was usually making up some of the calories until hopefully he finds his appetite and starts eating more on his own. I have to get him Grain-Free dog food today. 8 jars of baby food that I bought yesterday are being donated to my friend's sister's baby since they have rice in them and that is $4 down the tubes.

And lastly the vet was so pleased with his demeanor and how well his incision healed! She left the stitches in for 1 days b/c she was worried the healing would be compromised by the low blood protein but he healed beautifully! and he was active and downright energetic last night in the office, the vet tech said "Druppy, you look so good! you're so skinny but you look so good!" That made me feel good :) And he didn't shake or cry/whine or spaz out the whole time we were there, he wanted to bolt out of there the first chance he got, but that's totally normal, he seemed so much "less sick" last night.

So all in all, things are as good as can be expected and we are hopefully on the path to getting our dog back on track and even if he has to be on prednisone to control this for a long time, at least we're doing something to get his quality of life back to normal!

Thank you all for the support, concern, thoughts and prayers! It has definitely gotten us through these past few weeks!

In TTC news, with all this stress I have not had my period since January 3rd or 4th. I'm not 100% certain when I O'ed since I'm not charting anymore, but I thought it was about 2 weeks ago. Last night I thought for sure my period was going to start today (and of course it still might) I tested monday morning and it was negative... I wasn't surprised. I'll probably wait until the weekend and if AF still hasn't arrived then I'll test again. The longer she holds out though, the less luckily we have any chance since I was pretty sure I o'ed right around his surgery (2 weeks ago) our romps in the sack were few and far between, there's stil la chance of course, but that chance is just not so great. and to be honest TTC really took a back seat to the dog's health concerns so now that we have that sort of under control, perhaps things will go better this next time around!

Quick update

just a super quick update - I've hardly had any time to read the blogs I follow let alone write my own.
Druppy had surgery last Tuesday - exploratory surgery to get some biopsies and see what they can find. the blood work came back saying the white blood cell count was still super high so the antibiotics hadn't done anything for that and his red blood cell percentage was down so he was boardline anemic.

So the surgery was really our best course of action to find something. Well they didn't find much, 2 small spots on the liver which otherwise looked very healthy so they biopsied the liver spot - the intenstines were thickened (there wasn't one isolated inflammed area they could remove) and the lymph in that area was enlarged so they took a biospy of the lymph and the intenstine. The results could take up to 14 days, but we're hopeful that we'll hear something by the end of the week (the samples had to be sent to UPenn Hospital and it all depends on how busy the lab is). the incension looks ok, seems to be healing and he doens't bother with it too much so when we're home we take the elizebathen collar off.

We still have to shove pills down his throat, he's still on all 3 antibiotics. I guess they are more for preventative measures then anyhting right now. And we're supposed to try to get him to eat like 600 calories per day - so we're force feeding him baby food. Let me just say that I will never ever force my child to eat chicken and gravy baby food - oh dear God in heaven is that stuff nasty! I suppose I can't swear it off completely but if I can avoid ever having to feed that to my child I'll be one happy woman!

anyway I hope once the antibiotics are done he'll get at least some of his appetite back. We're trying so many crazy concoctions and I feel like we're wasting a lot of food but some things work and some things don't.

He still has good days and bad days, the bad days the only thing he eats is the baby food we have to inject in his throat, the good days he picks food off plates I strategically place around the house. But at the end of the day he does come up in bed with us so I do know he still loves us :)