Champion of My HeartA real-time memoir about life with a fearful border collie, by Roxanne Hawn

Monday, we showed you some agility highlights as Lilly recovers from her neurological troubles. Today, we prove that it isn’t always pretty.

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At our last veterinary neurology appointment, Lilly got the OK to do agility and other more strenuous tasks so that her brain can start figuring out how to rewire certain movements. I convinced myself that Lilly jumped differently and weaved weirdly, but after looking at old agility videos, it seems more like Lilly exaggerates her movements following her “brain injury.” Videos, ahoy!

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Blame it on the steroids and other medications required to treat Lilly’s eningoencephalomyelitis / meningoencephalitis (inflammation of the brain and lining of the brain and spinal cord). Two weeks ago today, Lilly ate 1/2 of a canvass totebag while I was away at a work meeting.

We, of course, induced vomiting in our wayward dog, and we felt pretty confident we’d gotten all / most of the canvass totebag to come back out before it could cause major trouble for Lilly.

Well, 10 days later …

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I know I’ve been griping a lot about the struggles of dealing with Lilly’s recovery, but I have one odd-but-good behavioral change we’ve seen.

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Nearly 2 months into this adverse vaccine reaction with Lilly, I’m still a wreck. At least once a day, Lilly and I have a conversation — brain to brain, heart to heart — that goes something like this.

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Remember, my sad bloody Valentine? We’re happy to report that Lilly’s nose now looks like this:

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Cue the sports-training-montage music from the movie Rocky. In recent days, Lilly has shown marked improvement in her strength and body control. We still remind her to be “careful” or to “go slow” on stairs, but as you can see in this new video update, Lilly is getting stronger.

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We’re really trying to get back on a normal blog schedule, but it has been tougher than expected to balance our must-do list with everything else. Plus, as Lilly starts feeling better, she wants more Mommy time … and in a world where the choice is spending time with my girl and writing a post … well, no offense. ;o)

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New York Metropolitan Opera star and animal lover Janet Hopkins will join Grand Champion Sweetbriar’s Ecco D’Oro (Ecco) in New York for a musical good luck send off as he competes in the 2012 Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. At 1 pm on today at the Hotel Pennsylvania in Midtown Manhattan, Hopkins will serenade opera loving Ecco with a favorite personalized Italian aria, “O Mio Babbino Cane.”

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Whew! Long day, so just a quick note about Lilly’s recovery from meningoencephalomyelitis (inflammation of the brain and lining of the brain and spinal cord) after having an adverse rabies vaccine reaction. Today, Lilly had her first recheck appointment with the team at Rocky Mountain Veterinary Neurology (housed inside the Veterinary Referral Center of Colorado).

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For the last 24 hours, Lilly has dramatic tummy troubles every 2-3 hours like clockwork. The diarrhea came on quickly Tuesday (2/7) afternoon and got worse overnight, despite the piles of rice I fed her to bulk things up. Our veterinary specialty hospital discharge instructions warned us this might happen as a side-effect from (primarily) the steroids Lilly is taking, but also as a consequence of the immune-mediator drug Lilly needs.

It is NOT a sign of her primary disease, but instead … just an icky outcome from the now 7 medications Lilly now takes as part of her recovery from meningoencephalomyelitis (inflammation of the brain and lining of the brain and spinal cord) after having an adverse rabies vaccine reaction.

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All of us at Chez Champion of My Heart remain in awe of the outpouring of love, support, and prayers in the wake of Lilly’s near-death experience with meningoencephalomyelitis. We have one more request … in addition to sending mojo for NO seizures and FULL recovery, please add SLEEP to our wishlist. We are tired!

Lilly has monster insomnia from the steroids (we assume). She only sleeps for 15-30 minutes at a time. Of course, it doesn’t help that she is crazy thirsty and needs to pee all the time — day and night — as well, but it breaks our heart that she hardly sleeps.

She cried, whimpered most of last night. In other words, no one around here is getting much sleep.

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I’m sorry it took me so long to post a blog update. Lilly’s hospital discharge on Sunday, February 5, 2012, took longer than expected, so we didn’t get home until around dinnertime. All of us were / are exhausted. The headline, however, is that Lilly is home … and as of this second has been seizure free since Friday, February 3, 2012, in the late afternoon.

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As of 12:30 pm or so mountain time, Saturday, February 4, 2012, Lilly had been seizure free since around 4:30 pm Friday (2/3). I’m happy to report a few other pieces of good news … finally. The post includes the latest video of Lilly’s recovery from vaccine-induced meningoencephalomyelitis.

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Doesn’t every media outlet release a list of some sort this time of year? We’re joining the fray with our top 5 news items for 2011.

The year didn’t go at all as we’d planned, which is disappointing in many ways, but you can only do what you can do when distractions and demands leave zero time for pursuing your bigger goals.

I suppose the biggest feelings at the end of 2011 are relief and gratitude that we survived relatively unscathed. C’mon 2012, we’re counting on you.

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