One of the things that’s going on is worse today. Melody’s been having problems with her mouth being sensitive, and we had her booked in for a vet appointment on Monday to get it checked out.
Well, my dad came home from work today (I’ve been at my mom’s) and one of her eyes is swollen nearly shut. So we called and they got us an appointment an hour from now.
I’m hoping she’s okay. Also that whatever is wrong isn’t to terribly expensive to get fixed. Because she’s nearly 15, so it may be possible my dad won’t think it’ll be worth it to do anything if it’s really expensive.
Melody made it through the night, which was what was worrying me most. I wasn't sure if it was dangerous to let her sleep if she was still feeling the effects of the sedation, but all seems okay on that front - she's back to being completely aware again. She's still having a lot of trouble moving around, but I'm hoping that's because of the fall she had yesterday and that it'll clear up in a couple days when her muscles all recover. Things are looking better. Hopefully that continues.
I have to go in to put titles on a dog, my dog literally can't open her mouth wide enough to eat anything. I don't have the money to pay for the X-rays they need to do, so I need to wait until my dad gets home from work to get Melody into the vet because he can't get time off of work today. Just fuck.
A couple of people have suggested I set up a way to donate to help with Melody’s medical stuff that’s going on.
I’m not exactly comfortable doing that because we’re not sure what’s going to happen moving forward. Basically, I might start trying to get donations for the medical treatment we have planned, but find out that we can’t go forward with that or with very much at all and end up needing to refund most of what people had donated. And on top of that my dad made me aware that he put away money over Melody’s life in the event that she would need medical treatment. While what he had put away may not be enough to cover everything we need for however long she has left, it’s certainly a start and there isn’t as much financial worry as I would have thought.
I didn’t go over what exactly happened at the vet because I was so distressed that night, but I’ll do that now to give you all an idea of why things are a little complicated moving forward. Actually, I’ll give a full account of everything so far under the cut.
I’ll put a tl;dr up here...
tl;dr I’m not going to put up any kind of donations thing for Melody. She’s been through a lot over the week, and she may not have a ton of time left, but even if things go the most hopeful route, we’ll probably scrape by with what we have. I do very much appreciate everyone caring so much for Melody - the best dog I ever could have asked for.
However, if you’re still feeling generous, there is a family and a dog that need your help. I wanted to donate to them, but because of my money going toward school and my own dog, I can’t. Right now @vaspider has a youcaring up for Kusto [x]. If you do have some spare change and want to make a difference, please donate to them. I’ve been made aware that my family can cover what Melody needs, even if it is very tight, but these people need your help to keep their dog as comfortable as possible for the rest of his life (yes, it is a hospice plan).
A quick quote from vaspider’s byf:
“Kusto (SmallDog) is terminally ill. Please don’t send me messages of support that require responses. He’s 14. It’s fucking me up. I don’t have the energy to respond to those messages. I can feel that you are sad about my dog, and I appreciate it. Genuinely. I just can’t talk about it right now.”
So be sure to keep your support to things that don’t require a response.
Now on to Melody.
From August 4th to August 8th my dad, my uncle, and Melody were up at the family cottage (I was at my mom’s). According to my dad, everything seemed fine there. When they got home in the evening of August 8th, Melody didn’t eat, but it isn’t too unusual for her to skip a meal after coming home from the cottage. My dad didn’t worry about it and left the food bowl down for her overnight, expecting the food to be eaten by the time he got up for work the next morning like it usually is in these situations.
When my dad woke up the next morning (August 9th) he checked the food dish and none of it had been eaten. He thought that maybe this was Melody being stressed from travel longer than usual because of her age, but he wanted to get something into her stomach, so he tried giving her one of the hard treats she likes. Melody took it, bit into it, yelped, and spat everything out. He had to get to work, but once he was there he called me about what had happened, and said he’d try to get a vet appointment to look at her teeth. The earliest he could get was August 14th, so that’s what he booked. That night when he got home he gave Melody some cheese, bread, and lunch meat because they were soft and easy for her to chew, and she needed to eat something.
On August 10th my dad picked me up from my mom’s while he was coming home from work because I was going to stay with him for the next while. When we got home and let Melody out I noticed that her right eye looked strange. I took a closer look and realized it was nearly swollen nearly shut. My dad called the vet and asked if there was any way we could get in that night, but there were no openings. Rather than going straight to an emergency clinic (because those are extremely expensive) we called other vets in the area and we found one that could take us about an hour from when we called, though they had to get their vet to come in from their other practice.
We got Melody to the vet, and when the vet came in he asked if there was any way for either my dad or I to open her mouth for him to take a look at her teeth, since over the phone we expressed that she was not very good with being handled by strangers. We both said no. My dad can’t because Melody won’t let him, and while on a good day I can pull back her lips, because she was in pain I said that I wouldn’t be able to. So the only way to see inside her mouth was to sedate her.
They did a medium-low dose of the sedative into Melody’s back while I kept her head busy with cheese. The vet left for about twenty minutes, and when he came back to check on how she was doing, Melody was still wide awake and pacing around the room. He said they’d have to do an IV injection this time to be sure it knocked her out, and to do that they’d need to muzzle her. I asked if I could try muzzling her before we had someone try to force it on her face, they said yes, and I got it on her no problem with the help of some cheese. They took her into the back to do the second injection, and when they brought her back in she was already almost out.
The vet checked her mouth and felt around the eye and said he felt no abscesses or tumours or the like. So the problem was most likely that a couple of her back teeth in the right side of her mouth were infected and since the roots of those teeth go up near the eye that's what caused the swelling. He wanted to do blood work on her to see if the infection had spread to her bloodstream, so he did that, as well as an injection of an antibiotic, a pain killer, and a rabies vaccine since she was pretty much due for the vaccine at this point, so why not do that as well, right?
We were given antibiotic pills, painkiller pills, and anti inflammatory eye drops, they gave Melody the reversal for the sedative, and once she was able to walk we were sent on our way, saying that in a day they’d call about the blood work, and in a couple weeks they would probably be able to put her on anesthetic and remove the infected teeth.
Melody wasn't right for the rest of that night. She was woozy and not all there. She fell a couple of times because her back legs completely slid out from under her. I stayed up and checked on her every hour or so that night to make sure she kept breathing.
The next morning all was well. We soaked her food in water until it was mushy and she wolfed it all down! The vet called about the blood work and said the infection was in her bloodstream, so she needed to take another antibiotic as well. They also discovered she was in the beginning stages of kidney failure, which could likely be treated by simply switching her over to a kidney support food for now.
Things started getting better. Melody was taking pills fine, and while the eye drops were a struggle, her eye was looking back to normal. It was obvious her mouth was still bugging her, but that would only be until we ran the course of antibiotics and could have her mouth be operated on.
Tuesday morning (August 9th) I got up and started gearing up to go to work. I tried giving Melody her pills like normal - shove it in a cube of cheese, give her the cube, she’d grab it and scarf it - but unlike normal she very gently took the end of the cheese in her front teeth and tried to work the cheese further back into her mouth. She tried a couple times then spit the cheese wrapped pill back out. I tried again, and no luck. I tried feeding her other things, and every time she’d only take the very edge and try to get it further back into her mouth from there. I watched her panting and she would only open her mouth a very small amount. I called the vet and they wanted to get her in for X-rays on her jaw.
Once both my dad and I were off work we brought her in. She was doing better than she had been that morning, but she still wasn’t wanting to chew. She was sedated again for the X-rays. My dad and I were eventually brought back to the X-ray room to be shown the images. Her jaw looked pretty much normal, though she did have a touch of arthritis in the right joint. He then said he did full body X-rays, and switched to an image of her chest. He pointed out a mass up near her lungs and said that it was a tumour. At this point it’s small enough that it isn’t pressing against her lungs or heart, but we don’t know when it started or how fast it’s growing.
Knowing there’s a tumour in her chest is terrifying, not just because, you know, there’s a tumour, but because it also complicates putting her on anesthetic to have the teeth pulled. If the tumour grows very much by the next time we have an appointment (August 29th, the day before Melody’s 15th birthday) it will be too dangerous to put her on anesthetic because the tumour may interfere with her breathing or heartbeat.
So right now we don’t know what we can do. If the tumour doesn’t grow or only grows a small bit we’re going to try getting the teeth pulled. Of course there’s the problem that she’s very old, so being on anesthetic is already dangerous, and there’s no guarantee that she will be able to come back out of it, even under the best circumstances. If the tumour does grow enough that getting the teeth pulled would be too dangerous, we’ll likely start giving her a more powerful painkiller and just try to keep her happy and comfortable for however much longer she has or until the pain becomes too much for her.
I’ll probably post semi-regular updates on Melody for as long as I can to keep anyone who wants to know how she’s doing... updated on that I guess.
Melody is so much better today! When I got up this morning and sat down on the couch she came over and play bowed at me with her tail wagging like crazy! She also wanted to wander around the front yard rather than just going out, peeing, and immediately wanting back in the house to sleep more!
And Melody's back end gave out again. Her back legs just... slide. I'm doing my best to keep her on carpet because that's happened a few times now. At least she had the strength to pick herself up this time though.
