Pippa update, and to those of you who expressed good wishes and / or asked how she was doing, thanks!
You recall she had two simultaneous problems: an eye injury that was not healing properly, plus being put on phenobarb so she was practically drugged unconscious.
The new antibiotic ointment and pills did the trick, and now her eye looks okay, so that’s a huge relief. We’re going to continue with the terramycin ointment for a week. She gets that in her right eye every eight hours and a different kind of eye drop in her left eye every 12 hours for the rest of her life (that is for dry eye). This means that four times a day, I say to myself, “Okay, which way is right?” and pretend to hold a pencil. Seriously, that’s the only way I can be sure I’m putting the correct eye stuff in the correct eye.
Meanwhile! Two weeks ago, this was Pippa’s condition: unable to walk more than two steps without falling over, plus asleep 99% of the time, plus falls off the bed and has to be crated at night, plus confinement makes her anxious so she is on Trazadone to help her tolerate that.
As of today, this is Pippa: able to walk 20-30 steps without falling, more or less able to move around on tile as well as carpet, starting to be able to cope with uneven ground in yard, sleeps more than usual but not remarkably so, able to sleep on bed. She’s also much more responsive and, of course, she can now open both her eyes, which has to help even if her vision is not great.
So … she is not back to her old self, but she has made a lot of progress and I think we’re starting to see the light at the end of this tunnel. I have some hope that by Monday she will not need constant supervision to keep her from potentially falling off furniture — and if not by Monday, then surely by next Friday.
Here is Pippa quite a few years ago, with a lot of qualifying ribbons she picked up at … let me see, this must have been a CKCSC show … for Rally or regular obedience, I don’t remember.
Please Feel Free to Share:
That’s great news!
Good, hope she keeps improving. Everybody keep well.
Ah, the pretend pencil trick!
It’s very useful.
Glad to hear she’s doing better.
Maybe get a sturdy box or low footstool that you can stick a bit of leftover carpeting on, for Pippa, as a step so she can get up on and down off the bed?
And yes, I also have to pretend to hold a pen to start writing, to be sure which is right and which is left. Otherwise I get it wrong about one third of the time.
She has steps for the bed. The phenobarb made her so groggy she did not see/could not orient/was too unsteady to use the steps. I still don’t trust her to manage any kind of steps, but she seems much more aware of where she is and much less liable to fall off the edges of things.