Curve Balls, Dog Bladders and Time Warps - Part One

I never expected my sophomore post to focus on our dog O. Henry and our new acquaintance with all things related to canine bladder infections. (How I wish this was our biggest hurdle right now.) But life is unpredictable and life with pets brings its own unique set of wild cards.

Last Friday morning, after observing some changes in Henry's mobility over the course of 48 hours, we awoke to discover his hind end was virtually paralyzed. The compression of what happened between then and now - a mere 72 hours - included a visit to our vet, a referral to the University of Minnesota Emergency Veterinary Clinic, x-rays, an MRI, a spinal tap and finally after a year on Friday, bringing him back home again.

We've been told he has an inoperable lesion inside his spinal cord - something the radiologist had never seen before in his 30 years of reading films.  Talk about a curve ball. Only our curve ball is attached to three different medications and a vague lesson on how to manually "help" O. Henry void his bladder until he regains function in his hind quarters - although that question is still a big, black hole of unknowing.

We were told to keep our 6 year-old, 63 lb. mixed breed Australian Shepherd/Collie on complete bed rest for a week and hope that some sign of neurological function would return. (If there is life again in them-there-legs, then it's on to physical therapy sessions and a healing time frame of about 2 months, give or take a lifetime.) We were warned that the risk of a bladder infection was high, and we didn't catch a break on that front either.

But, I digress. P.T. is the future. Rest and bladder management is the present.

For anyone unfamiliar with how a human being can help a large dog pee, there are several videos posted on YouTube. (You knew there were, didn't you?) Our system involves me holding up Henry's rear end while he braces himself on his working front legs.  My husband stands at Henry's head, facing me, bends over and presses the flat of his fingers along Henry's ribs until he's about half-way to the business end of Henry's tail.  Then, because Henry has a large abdomen, it's a sad, comic game of me doubling over to watch Henry's penis while Kent blindly hunts around by feel as best he can while applying pressure on both sides. When I finally, see the urine stream, I shout, "That's it! You're on the right spot."

So far we've had moderate success and a few head clunks.

It's amazing though, how quickly one adapts to a new normal. Our first night home with Henry we barely managed to sleep, so tense were we in needing and wanting to listen to his movements. Now, three nights into the ordeal, we still sleep in fits, but deeper sleep is achieved between the sessions of tending to him.  The first 24 hours it was hard to leave his side for fear he might struggle off his dog bed or hurt himself somehow.  Now, as I write this, Kent is downstairs comforting our other dog, Oliver, who's understandably confused and distressed by this circus, and I am in the dining room, while Henry sleeps on a dog bed placed between the table and the sliding screen doors.

It hasn't even been four full days yet, but each hour seems to slow down inexorably as we monitor each test of his status, "Will he eat? Will he drink? Can he poop? Do his back feet respond if we tickle them? Will we find that blasted bladder? And on and on."

For now, on this Monday just after lunch, (cold pizza from a weekend delivery by the way), we're set to be home until Friday when we take Henry back for more tests and our next set of instructions for more new "normals."

May the Bladder Force be With Us.

To be continued.