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

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I remain befuddled by the reality that Lilly may still die from this vaccine-induced brain and spinal cord inflammation. That, I think, reflects my overall sense of optimism in life. Early on, it  never truly dawned on me that she would NOT survive. And, yet, I know I easily get bogged down by worry and not-so-positive thinking. While massaging Lilly’s back for more than an hour Sunday night, I realized that I constantly walk a tightrope between gratitude that she still lives at my side and (preemptive) grief over what her loss would mean to me.

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Friday morning (1/25/13) around 6:45 am, Lilly had her first seizure in about a year. Then, we found an absurd amount of blood in her urine, and our veterinary team found AIR inside the walls of Lilly’s bladder. That’s. NOT. Good. Potentially life-threatening, even.

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When Lilly became so dangerously ill nearly a year ago, we abandoned her anxiety meds because of their dampening effect on her now troubled brain. And, we essentially stopped working on dog training issues. These days, I ask her for very little, and the results are these.

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A blaring alarm jolted me out of bed Monday morning. I squeezed our morning dog-care routine into as little time as possible, before putting on many layers to brave the extreme cold. Alas, I ended up cancelling Lilly’s neurology exam. Here is our frustrating tale.

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Sometimes we have to laugh at the predicaments spawned by Lilly’s ongoing neurological problems — otherwise, we’ll cry. Here are a few examples of the funny and the not so funny moments in our lives.

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I suffer certain doubts about how Lilly’s vaccine-induced illness is going and how it might end. I experience real dread at key points in the hills and valleys of our journey — as it stretches now into its second year. At times, I fear that I’m making bad decisions about Lilly’s ongoing treatment. I still cry … a lot. Perhaps that goes without saying.  Read the rest of this entry »

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Poor Tom. As soon as I headed to town to see my mom Tuesday afternoon, things went to #*!!. When I returned a couple of hours later, I saw signs of things amiss. Here is the sad, sad tale.

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Exhausted doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of our current state. All the worry, stress, and veterinary activity has caught up with us. These chemo weekends kick our @$$e$.

We also stayed mostly off social media last week out of respect to our friends in the wake of the big storm, including Sam and Marge on Staten Island. We didn’t want to clog anyone’s feed with our day-to-day hoohah.

BUT, it’s Monday (as I write this), and we’re looking for another fresh start. Here is a brief update on Lilly’s cytarabine injection weekend #4.

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Monday dawned with a full-blown anxiety attack hovering. Seeking just an hour of quiet, an hour or solace, an hour of something other than work or worry, I headed out to the greenhouse. Big mistake. An unsupervised and steroid-fueled Lilly helped herself to a non-food snack. There went my day.

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Today is World Rabies Day, which is meant to “raise awareness about the impact of human and animal rabies, how easy it is to prevent it, and how to eliminate the main global sources.” Nine months into a life / death struggle following Lilly’s severe adverse rabies vaccine reaction, I look at things a bit differently.

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It’s official. I hadn’t added everything up since the end of June, but I did on Friday, and we topped $15,000 in expenses to treat Lilly’s severe rabies vaccine reaction. To be exact … $15,095.01. People have been asking, so I’ve again set up a chip-in, if you’re so inclined. No pressure. No expectations at all. Read the rest of this entry »

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Buckle up, kids. I’m ranting today, and it’s a curse-soaked doozy.

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There is a rant brewing about something that happened at the veterinary hospital today with a fellow dog owner, but for now … let’s only focus on Lilly’s recovery status. A tiny bit of potentially scary news today.

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Lilly made great gains in her recovery through about Wednesday. She hasn’t been as great since then. She seems weak, tired, wobbly, and droopy. I worry about her gums and tongue being pale. We’re not getting much sleep at night. BUT, Lilly can walk again — not well, but she can walk.

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If Lilly was 5% of herself Friday (Aug 10), we’d say she is 20% of herself today (Saturday, Aug 11). Just talked to our neurologist, though, and he said I’m a “brutal Olympic judge” because he would have given her a much higher score. Some photos from today.

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