Wednesday-3:45am: vet update

Well, Karma finished her antibiotics Friday night, right?  By Sunday night she had diarrhea and on Monday there was the leaking, bloody urine again.  She's been off her food all along and hasn't been drinking much, either.  I figured the antibiotics were upsetting her tummy.  She's been sleeping a lot again.

Last night Dagan came and we went off to the vet for her checkup.  Obviously wasn't going to be good.  

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Karma's lost a pound and didn't have enough urine to even get a sample.  Since the antibiotics she was taking aren't doing the trick, they need a sterile urine sample they can send to the lab to be cultured.  They not only culture the bacteria, they test to see what particular antibiotics will kill it, too.  This will take about three days.  BUT she hasn't been drinking and her bladder was empty.  Therefore, they couldn't even get a sample to send to the lab and we couldn't start her on anything because it would interfere with the sample results.  Rather than have her stay overnight (for her sake and my financial sake) they suggested we could drop her off in the morning and they'd keep her during the day today and get the sample.  They use ultra-sound and a needle right straight through the belly into the bladder--much easier than a catheter--though I doubt Karma will appreciate that kindness much.

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Dagan is going to be here to pick Karma up around 6:45am and drop her off before work.  I woke up at 2:30am and couldn't get back to sleep, so here I am. 

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We will go pick her up after Dagan gets off work tonight.  She will come home with a few days of the old antibiotics while we wait for the results of the culture.  Then she will be put on something stronger (usually more side effects, they said), but we will know it will work.  There didn't appear to be any other obvious underlying health issues and it was actually a good thing her bladder was empty because then we knew it wasn't a blockage of some kind--since she hasn't been peeing much.  Just that she's not drinking...or eating much at all...which isn't good...but better than a blockage.

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So...Karma is still very sick.  Then poor Leah went home sick and miserable from work yesterday (so there will be no crafts or laptop table repair tonight as planned).  Caroline comes this afternoon, too.  

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When Dagan came by last week he used the SpotBot for me.  What a sweetheart!  It's a good thing he left it here.  The mess has returned.  (Not that it ever totally quit.)  And it does sound like things may be worse before they get better with eventually getting the stronger antibiotics with more side effects next week.  Poor Karma. 

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Dagan did figure out how I wrenched my lower back, though...the "cat bathtub wrestling"!!  DUH!!  Of course!  An egregious error in judgment on my part.  Just ask Karma...who licked herself incessantly for hours and hours afterwards...and then barfed all over the apartment gagging up her first ever hairballs.  The indignity of it all.

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My back has been slowly improving.  We'll see how it does when we go back to the pill-fighting again, eh?  But, for now, I guess I am doing better than Karma.

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As for cleaning up after the blizzard...   

...I have never seen them use a plow with such a huge front attachment for our parking lot here.

But there was so much snow that they couldn't pile it anywhere in the parking lot anymore... 

...so they pushed it out into that side road.  I know you can't tell but the back tires on the plow were spinning and sliding around on the ice.   

It would come back with its arms raised high... 

...reminding me of a scorpion for some reason. 

You could see other smaller plows moving the snow out of the road and into the empty field behind the garages. 

The details of the snow removal always takes a few days.  First is getting the roads cleared, of course.  The snowbanks can get so high that it gets hard to see cars coming at the intersections.  Then they have to go around town and remove that corner snow--at least at the main intersections--(we wish it were all of them)--scoop it into dump trucks and haul it out of town.  They have to do the same thing in all the various parking lots when they run out of piling room.  Quite organized.  I bet the plow companies are thrilled to have the work.  Been pretty sparse the last couple winters.  We're supposed to accumulate another 2-3 inches by tomorrow, I guess, but yesterday was gorgeous!  Sunny and warm--in the 30s.  Beautiful day!  Almost felt like spring!

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  Anyways, not sure when I'll be back.  I'm still not good for very much computer time, but I am fitting in a little here and there so that I am catching up with emails and comments, at least.  I've missed you guys!!!

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Thank you for the prayers and well wishes for Miss Karma.  Hopefully doing this culture and getting her on different antibiotics will do the trick.  I hope Leah will feel better soon, too...and that all of you are doing well, also.  
Until then...

How many of you remember Roy & Trigger and Dale & Buttermilk?
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"I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable...but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing."

Agatha Christie