Updates all around!

I took Toby's stitches out last Thursday and he's back to his mischievous self. He has a huge scar under the fur on his paw, but other than that he's 100% back to normal.

A few days after Zipp's accident you'd never know there had been one! He has nothing wrong with him at all. The bruises all healed, he can see fine, and he's no longer afraid of the bedroom!

As for me, I still haven't heard back from the Doctor as to the results of my most recent medical test (last Wednesday.) I'm going to call them tomorrow to find out. In the mean time, I'm down 40lbs which comes out to 3 pant sizes and 2 shirt sizes! I'm basically giving away my entire closet to one of my sorority sisters because EVERYTHING is way too big! I have a few shirts I can still wear, but I had to go out and buy a new pair of pants because all of my pants were too big to even use a belt with. I have some pj pants and sweatpants, but only the 1 pair of pants to actually wear out of the house. The weight loss is awesome, but it sucks not being able to buy new clothes since I have to pay the doctors and the hospital and the lab.....

Ain't I just got the luck?

So Toby tried to cut his paw off Monday and we got everything all sewed up. Sucks but everyone's OK. Well, I went into the bedroom to get a sock to put over his foot (to keep him from licking/chewing the stitches) when all the sudden Zippy starts SCREAMING like someone's trying to kill him. Eric had left a wardrobe bag with his suit in it on the floor and Zippy got the hanger stuck in his eye!!! He was actually pulling the wardrobe bag across the floor....

Luckily the hanger had a little metal ball on the end so it was dull. I took him to the vet (of course) and it turns out that it didn't injure his eyeball at all. The hanger went up over his eyeball and bruised the tissue on the back of his eyelid and over his eye. We got sooooo lucky on this one. Zipp very easily could have lost his eye. This has all been too much excitement for one week so hopefully nothing else will happen!!! ::knock on wood::

Poor Toby =(

So tonight kinda sucked just a little. I was just sitting around with the pups like usual, didn't feel particularly wonderful.... nothing out of the ordinary. I let the pups out to potty and they ran around a little like usual having fun while I grabbed a glass of juice. I opened the door and called them to come inside and in came Brodie, then Toby, but Zipp didn't want to come in. I tried to coax him a bit more, but nothin so I gave up and turned to go back inside..... just to find bloody paw prints all over the kitchen floor. There wasn't anything on the carpet so I didn't know where it came from! I grabbed the cat and checked her all over, but she was fine. Next closest was Toby who was laying by the couch and front door. I checked one front paw and found nothing... as soon as I touch the other paw my fingers were covered in sticky, red, blood... I grabbed a cloth and wet it down to wash some of the blood off so I could see what was going on. Looking very carefully, I saw that he had a very deep laceration that cut his main pad half off his paw! It was terrible.... I grabbed the no-stick wrap and wrapped up the paw kinda tight to stifle the bleeding.

I threw on a new shirt while I called the vet I used to work for. Luckily they said I could go ahead and bring Toby in. This all happened around 3pm. Eric took off work early so I swung by and picked him up on the way. As soon as we got there they took him back and put him in a kennel. We waited and waited and waited, but they ran into a problem with another patient and it took them a while to get to him. Finally at like 5:30 they got to take a look at it and informed me that it was pretty bad and would definitely need stitches! My poor Toby! They would have to put him under to take care of it so we took off for a while.

They finished up with him and brought him out to us about 7:30. He was so wobbly that he could hardly walk! He looked drunk =) so I picked him up and he fell asleep and started snoring. The vet says there were actually two cuts- one smaller one on one of the toe pads, and then the big one. They were both very clean slices and there wasn't anything stuck in the cuts so the vet thinks it was something sharp like glass. We checked the back yard and found a couple small pieces of glass, but nothing with blood on it so we're still not sure what did it. I'm going to check again tomorrow when it's light out. In the mean time we took the very sleepy Toby to Petsmart and got some booties to 1) keep the wound clean and 2) prevent any new ones.

Poor Toby =(

Latest Health Update:

So, I saw the GI doctor today. He's not convinced that it's my gallbladder. He says a lot of the symptoms sound like gallbladder, but all the tests came back negative so far and some of my symptoms don't fit. He thinks it's Gastroparesis.

Gastroparesis: Gastro meaning stomach and Paresis being paralysis, AKA a slow stomach.

Gastroparesis is when your stomach doesn't contract like it's supposed to do the food doesn't get mushed up and it doesn't get to your intestines as fast as it should. I've been reading and so far it sounds like a pretty good fit. Fatty foods cause your stomach to empty even slower so that's a good reason fatty foods would be making me sick. HOWEVER- the stuff I'm reading says that liquid fats (like in drinks) doesn't usually have as much trouble so that's why the Ensure wasn't bothering me. Even what's more- I found several examples of people who had their gallbladders removed only to find that their gallbladder was fine but THIS was their problem! Lots of stuff can cause it, but 40% of cases have no known cause.

And now for the bad news....
If this is really what's wrong with me it can be a life-long condition. They treat it with heartburn medicine (Prilosec, Nexium, Zegerid,) a strict diet that is very low in fats, meats, and fiber and sometimes medication that blocks the seratonin receptors in the stomach. In bad cases they even suggest blenderizing all your food or eating strained baby food.

For now they've given me Zegerid to take and on Oct. 23rd I'm going in for a Gastric Emptying Test. I have to eat a bowl of radioactive oatmeal =) lol and then they take pictures over the course of about 90 minutes to see how fast my stomach empties. Oh well, we'll see huh? If you want to know more you can look it up online by googleing Gastroparesis.