Sicker Than A Dog?

Gosh, this has been a hectic winter. It seems like everyone has been getting sick, either full bore or a touch of something. One thing I have noticed is that pneumonia seems to be spreading like wildfire this year.
　
First, my aunt – the one that has been in and out of the hospital and currently in the nursing home – has had it. They have treated it and twice she has had a bout with it. Second, my dad’s cousin’s wife, Virginia, fought and fought with something this Winter and couldn’t get rid of it nor could the doctors diagnose it. I mentioned to her one time right before she went into the doctor again that she had better be careful or she would have pneumonia, too. Sure enough. She emailed me when she got back and she had pneumonia.
　
Then last Thursday I had stopped at the nursing home business office to put some money in Auntie’s beauty parlor account and was talking to my friend, Joyce. I hadn’t seen her for a few weeks and asked how she had been. She said that she hadn’t been feeling very good and her doctor suspected and/or wanted to get the jump on pneumonia (for God’s sake, we just turned 50, and we both thought that was something older people than us got!!). Her doctor had put her on prednisone and some other stuff. So that was case number three.
　
I have heard here and there while sitting in waiting rooms either at the emergency room, doctors’ offices or at the nursing home, that there are a lot of people who dancing with pneumonia this Winter.
　
I mentioned about Pongo being sick in my last blog. He had not been acting quite like himself lately. Usually, when I get home at night, he comes jumping off our bed and racing down the steps to greet me. It is more of a "hey, I got a pee first and then we’ll do the pet-me-give-me-a-treat greeting once I am done thing." But last week he would have to be coaxed to come down and only when necessary. He also was very touchy and hardly barked but when he did it was a hoarser sounding bark.
　
Pongo is a Minature Fox Terrier and looks like the "Taco Bell" dog on TV. (Oh, yes, you have seen him in the Thanksgiving picture above). I said once that I would tell the story of how we came to get him and I might as well tell that now.
　
Pongo belonged originally to my niece, Sierra. Sierra received Pongo for her birthday. During that time my sister Marci had just had their youngest, Brooke. Marci and her husband Wes were afraid that once Brooke started crawling, she would cause Pongo to maybe nip at her and they didn’t want that to happen, so they thought it best to get rid of him. Sierra was concerned about whom he would go to and would have liked it if he would go to someone they knew so that she could visit him. Well, one day I stopped at their house and Marci had already asked me a couple times if I would want to buy Pongo. I said no because we weren’t having any animals in the house. At that point, Pongo leaped up on the couch and came over and curled up in my lap. Oh, boy . . . I could see where this was going. He had never done that before. My boys had asked before if we would take him and I had said no. Pongo looked up at me with his puppy-dog big eyes (which when he stares at you like that they appear like they are welling up with tears about to explode). I’m really a sucker for stuff like this. I have it written on my forehead and it must appear out of nowhere and flash like a neon light "SUCKER, SUCKER, SUCKER." I told Marci I would have to think about it. Okay, where did that come from? Did I really just say that? The question was, or really the dilemmas were, two things; first, I didn’t want to pay for him, but I knew they had paid a lot for him and didn’t just want to give him away; and, two, how would I break that to Bob.
　
I talked to the boys and they had the solution to number one, but I was on my own as to what to do about number two. They had just got a new gaming system and they said they would be willing to give their old one to Sierra in trade for Pongo. They thought that it would go over okay because they would give her the system and all their old games. I started trying to add up in my mind all that I had paid for those games and was beginning to think I might be getting the raw end of this deal. I talked to Marci about it and that was okay.
　
Now to figure out what to do about Bob and the dog that would be infiltrating our house. Hmmmm. This was going to take some ingenuity and female smarts. Bob and I have sort of an unwritten rule of sorts when it comes to things like this. Each will play dumb when they are being played. We sort of put it in our pocket for another day to pull out if we need a trump card. I am sure he knew it at the time because he will still make some comments today, but I think he is still holding the trump card.
　
My plan was to tell Bob that we were watching Pongo for Marci and family while they were on vacation. We got him when it was about this time of year – in March. His birthday is in February and he was a little over a year old. He had been potty-trained already so that was good. So I picked him up and brought him home. The first thing Bob said when he saw him was "what is that mutt doing here?" (That is his favorite name for Pongo – "mutt"). I explained (with my fingers crossed behind my back) that we were watching him for Marci & fam while they were on vacation. Marci’s did take a weekend vaca during this time period, so I wasn’t entirely lying. I was in my mind – what I would call – stretching the truth. Pongo tried to even snuggle with Bob once in awhile because I think he could sense a bit of a dictatorship here and knew whom he needed to suck up to just a little. The rest of us were pushovers. The boys were overjoyed with him and he soon became more of Casey’s dog than anyone else’s. I think this is where the pecking order with Pongo started. Pongo was and has always been a very protective dog. If he is sitting in your lap, he is protecting you and no one else should dare come within his imaginary boundaries. If you did approach, he would bark at you and bare his teeth. He would never bite, but he could look fierce. One time I was going through a Culver’s drive-through to get an ice cream cone and had Pongo along for a ride. He likes ice cream because whenever we would go to Auntie’s to visit, she would always feed him a little bowl of ice cream warmed up slightly in the microwave. I drove up to the call station and ordered a cone for myself and a little kiddie dish for Pongo. Pongo started barking when I was putting in the order. When we drove up to the window, the kid said, "wow, is that all the bigger he is [he only weighs 7 lbs.], he sounded like he was a huge dog and I was afraid he might attack me when I was going to hand you the cone." I got a chuckle out of that.
　
Pongo likes to bark at whoever is lower on the pecking order. The pecking order goes Casey at top, me next, Brady third and Bob at the bottom of the pile. When we are all cleared out of the house, which is especially during the week, Pongo is left with just Bob and he would jump up in his lap if he was sitting. If no one was around, Bob was a softy and he has been caught in the past petting him. If someone was around, he would call him the "mutt" and shoo him away. The games we all play!! About a month later after our initial Pongo/game system transaction, Bob had asked me "aren’t they back yet." I laughed and then finally told him that we were taking over ownership. He balked at the idea but knew it was a losing cause. (He’s not so stupid – he knew he was getting an extra trump card out of this one.)
　
To this day and as recent as last weekend, Bob said something to Wes about "when are you going to take your dog back." Sierra would take him back in a heartbeat, but in the meantime, it is eight years later, Brooke has grown up and they have gotten a new dog. [Note: In the Thanksgiving picture above, that is my sister Marci seated in the second row immediately to my right, the third adult from the left; Wes is right behind her in the black; their oldest, Maci, is behind Marci; Sierra is in the front on the right end in the robin-egg blue sweatshirt; and the youngest, Brooke is right in front of Marci.]
　
With the history they have, it is funny how Bob can sometimes seem a little concerned about Pongo. Last Friday morning, I was in the middle of my cleaning frenzy getting ready for the "family invasion" (which I love, by the way). Bob called me from the barn to say that he had noticed one of our cats (one of the newer born ones who is probably approaching two years old), Midnight, was hacking a little when he went out that morning. He said he wasn’t his usual self, where when Bob would sit down in a chair in the garage to put his barn boots on, Midnight would curl around his leg, purring and waiting for a scratch and a pet. He said he had also noticed a lot of hacking going on with some of the cows and said he wondered if it was pneumonia with some of the animals on the farm. Pongo had been breathing kind of hard but every once in a while he will go through a little spell where he is not feeling good. This went on longer than usual though. I got off the phone with Bob and called the vet. I asked him what he thought after giving him his symptoms. Yes, he said it could be pneumonia or he is old enough where he could have fluid around the heart (thump, my heart sank at the mention of that), but he would bet it was the former rather than the later. We talked a little about it and I said I would rather opt for a shot than doing pills because I would never get him to eat them. So Pongo and I jumped in the car and took a little ride, which he loves to do and hasn’t done much lately since it had been Winter. Pongo despises the vet clinic (do you blame him!) and will usually get all upset the minute we walk in. I pled with him and told him it is going to be all right and that it will only hurt for a minute but that he will be better soon. Two shots later (one was an antibiotic for the pneumonia and the other a "Tylenol-like" fever reducing product), we were back home and within an hour he was romping around, just as good as new. It took a little hunk out of my day, but he was feeling much better and that made me happy. The doctor sent us home with a second shot to give Pongo which Bob and I have to tag team on to give to him in the next night or two.
　
So, the weekend comes and goes. Monday morning rolls around and I have a doctor’s appointment as a follow-up with my last A1C (diabetes) test. During the appointment, my doctor mentions that I am due for a tetanus and she would like to give me the Tdap shot which is a tetanus plus a booster for diphtheria and pertussis. She said that even though we are immunized when we are younger for the diphtheria and pertussis, it is now recommended that adults get this one-time booster which has been packaged with the tetanus. I said okay, as I am all up for anything that prevents me from getting sick. She also said that being a diabetic I am at high risk for pneumonia and I should get an pneumonia shot. (Aaahhhhh, that pneumonia thing again . . . ) Okay, again anything that prevents me from getting sick, I’m game. But, doc, any side effects? None, really to be concerned about, she said, but there is a flyer I will give you to read about it. Okay, I get both shots in my upper left arm because that is not my dominant arm. I get two Tweety-Bird bandages and I am ready to go. Oh, but one thing, before you leave, the nurse says, you may want to keep rotating your arm above your shoulder to work the shots into the muscles more or otherwise they will sort of just sit in that one spot and your arm will get sore and stiff. Okay, I can do that as I can’t see how that would be too hard not to do. So, I am in and out of the doctor’s office and off to the office to start the day, which I had already started four hours earlier and it is now only 8:30.

It is 6:00 and I am heading off to the nursing home after work to see Auntie. I’m feeling a little draggy and figure it is because I had a little bit of a lack of sleep problem over the weekend (those dang sisters of mine twisting my arm, making me go out and party with them like I am 21 again!!!). I visit with Auntie and head home by 7:15, make some supper, clean up a little and head to bed by 9:45. I wake up Tuesday morning and my arm is stiff and sore and a little warm. Oh, yea, the light goes off. I completely forgot about swinging my arm around like I was lassoing a calf yesterday. Ooops!! Geez, and I feel like I might be a little warm, too. I’ll grab some Advil, jump on the treadmill and then try to figure it out when I eat some breakfast. I stayed on the treadmill too long and need to hustle to eat, fill the dishwasher, throw a load in the washer, shower and get ready to head to work. Oh, yea, I was going to check out those sheets the doctor gave me.
　
The day comes and goes and I have now come full circle again and am heading back to the nursing home. Tired and with my arm still sore, I head home from seeing Auntie again and swear when I get home, I better check that sheet out again. With supper made and eaten, the kitchen cleaned up, and heading to bed, I grabbed the current book I’m reading (J.D. Robb’s "Fantasy In Death") so I can read a little before going to bed. I am thinking to myself that I am tired and I might not want to read. Then the light goes on in my head again . . . the sheets from the doctor. I pulled them out of my purse and started reading . . . yep, yep, yep. Fever, stiff and sore arm, tiredness . . . okay, what happened to "not likely" on the side effects, when these are all listed on the "probable" side effects. And, here I am feeling sicker than a dog.
　
I seem to always do well on the follow-up for everyone else when they are sick or hurting from something, but when it comes to me, I seem to suffer a little bit from a self-inflicted Alzheimer’s-type disease. I think that it is the Mother in me – take care of everyone else and ye shall be okay. Well, ye was feeling fine until I went to the doctor and then ye had two shots and now ye got sick. What’s up with this – the dog didn’t feel good and he got two shots and felt better an hour later! I was feeling fine, went to the doctor, got two shots and now I’m sicker than a dog. Seriously, where is the justice in this whole thing!! Maybe I should have gone to the vet instead . . .