Daizey

Well this post has almost nothing to do with lyme (I'll get to it first and over with) but will mostly be about Daizey.
As far as the whole lyme issue goes, I'm just getting over a small flare. I also just found out my thyroid has gone haywire, my level is supposed to be less than 35 and it's 941. It's why the doctor thinks Ive been having issues going out in the heat and why I think Ive been feeling crappy and missing the gym some lately. So I'm supposed to have another ultrasound (which the doc didn't write in my chart and so I had to cancel today's appointment) and see if the nodules we found last year have grown and are causing this and I am to see an endocrinologist.

As for Daizey, it's time to let her go. She's my best friend and has been a part of my life for such a long time now that it's going to be surreal not having her around. As she's gotten older, much like an older person, she's required a lot more care but I truly don't think she's happy anymore. She's gotten quite senile and we have been finding her in odd places like under chairs or the sofa (and for those that know her, she's not a small dog) and she's gone blind recently and fully deaf. I think sometimes it scares her. She has severe arthritis in her back and hips that we've been managing with pain medicine but her muscles have atrophied to where when she does stand her legs crisscross and she falls again. She can't walk more than a few feet and when she does walk she gets so out of breath. I was watching her last night and she'd wake up and walk a few feet, fall over, and head head would droop and she's sleep for 5 minutes then start the process over again. Her body is so tired.
Her favorite thing to do (besides eat lol which she still has energy to do with a little gusto) was to wiggle on her back on the carpet. I think she liked the feeling. But she hasn't been able to do that in the last year.
She's had a long eventful life.
When she was a young dog (no more than a yr or two old) she would "eat" the water from the hose while mom was spraying. She would jump all around and knock us down because it excited her so much but it also caused her to get pneumonia. She was sick on the back porch (she lived outside when she was young) and ate mom up one side and down the other when she put her in the car to take her to the vet.
She also ATE the little pen we kept her in when the neighbor kids came over, she wanted to play lol. Except for the one time she dug under the fence to play with the neighbor dogs and got stuck under their shed and tried to bite the lady. She came running out though when she saw me and didn't dig out a single time after that.
 When she was about 7 yrs old I started my 1st job as a kennel tech. and a few months into working there I noticed Daizey was coughing a lot so I took her in. Doc said she had heart worms and that we needed to treat her or she'd die. So of course we treated her, she got sick in between the treatments and stayed in the hospital for a month. The day of her last treatment I came in to work from school and saw blood all over the kennel area and when I went to get Daizey she was in the back of her cage, covered in blood, and limp. Doc said she got nippy when he gave her the shot and so he pulled her up by the leash til she passed out (like what he did with the pit bulls that came in from the place behind us) but she bit the table and broke her canine teeth so he stepped on her head and pulled them out with pliers. I quit right then, got Daizey and called mom. We had to take her to another vet who fixed what he could of her mouth a few days later once the swelling went down and she lost a canine tooth, broke another in half and lost 3 premolars. Also he ruined her nasal cavity from stepping on it and to this day she's always had a snotty nose no matter the amount of antibiotics she's on.
A few years later we discovered a lump at the base of her thoracic spine. Because her lungs were clear I decided to go ahead with surgery and we assumed it would be cancer. She is one lucky dog because once we sent it out for biopsy it ended up being necrotic tissue from , we assume, her heart worm treatment!
She also, pulmonary hypertension from the heart worms and went into acute renal failure after her surgery (OK, maybe not so lucky dog...) and was hospitalized on fluids and I had to force feed her- she was SO bad! But she made it out OK and made a new best friend, an english bulldog by the name of Brutus.
I ended up losing that job a few yrs later and Daizey was in maintenance mode with her kidneys doing OK and just panting from the P.H. She's gone downhill slowly with arthritis, but the hypertension is gone because of protandim and her heart looks good. Her calcium level has steadily creeped up and we thought lymphoma. Well her lymph nodes in her neck began to swell 2years ago, prednisone helped for awhle, but I took her to my old place of employment after she had a few seizures, her temp was over 106- we gave her I.V. fluids, put alcohol on her feet pads and gave her Valium, she finally came out of it and we biopsied her neck with just  needle and finally confirmed that it was a salivary gland adenoma probably caused by lymphoma. My baby has cancer.
After the high temp and seizures, we think her brain "fried" a little. She got stuck in the corner of my closet a few times and her senility has gone on an all time high. She once even got stuck behind out refrigerator! We made a ramp last yr for her to get in and out since she cant go down the 2 inch drop to the backyard anymore. She feel off the side of it into a shelving unit. Now she just doesn't even go outside, we are constantly cleaning up after her, finding her stuck in places (and she bites when we get her out because she's confused/hurts) bringing her food and water, washing the pee off her when she goes and then falls in it, and medicating her without getting bit (shes sees movement and always thinks its food so we have to be careful when first petting her). She takes up so much time and energy and I wouldn't change it for the world- if she were happy or had any quality of life. My sweet girl who we've done so much for, can no longer handle being alive. The cancer and arthritis have taken so much of her body away that no matter how much she eats we can feel the bones in her body. No medicine can fix this. No matter how many extra years we've gotten with protandim and pain medicine it's still too soon for my heart to let her go. Tuesday will be Daizeys last day here with us.