Ups and Downs and Roundabouts

Well it’s been ages since I last posted. Real life has gotten a much firmer grip this last week or so. The weekend before last I took the dogs for a long walk out at Jandakot Regional Park. It’s a massive area full of natural bush and dirt trails to follow which are sometimes lined with limestone and more clay like surfaces but are mostly soft dirt. We went Sunday afternoon and Robyn found us eventually and joined us with five of her Border Collies. So there was a pack of 8 Border Collies running through the bush, Raven a very happy and contented member of them. We walked for about an hour and a half, then the rain set in. I took home three tired, happy, wet and dirty Border Collies who didn’t harass me that night at all for games. I went again Monday afternoon after work, just because I knew they’d enjoy it and it certainly helps me get some much needed exercise. This time I walked the entire perimeter of the park….I haven’t looked up how long that is but it was bloody hard work and it took us nearly two hours! Again Tim and I had a nice quiet evening in front of the telly as the three of them were zonked. Next morning (Tuesday morning; Raven’s chemo day) Raven was limping slightly on her front leg. I went over her as carefully as I could, checking in between pads, pressing in muscles trying to find the source. She didn’t give me any clues so I assumed that it may have been from our bush walk the day before, she took off like a bullet after a bunny she’d seen and I figured she could just have some muscle soreness. I took her into Murdoch, told them about the limping but that everything else was just fine. Picked her up as usual after work and was told that she hadn’t received treatment today as her WBC was down to 0.8!!!! I asked the Oncology Nurse if they knew why and he told me it could be a couple of things, she may just have been fighting an infection we didn’t know about, sometimes they tend to fluctuate but that it was not commonly attributed to the drug Vincristine (her last chemo treatment a week ago). I asked if they’d noticed anything wrong with her paw, toes or leg and they hadn’t. He told me to just keep a close eye on her and bring her back next week, not to be too concerned. So we duly did so and I noticed as we walked out to the car she was still limping. I took Spryte and Cypher to training that night, Raven seemed tired and grumpy bout something, plus I figured she needed crating for her limp to improve. By the time I got home Tuesday night she hardly wanted to put her left paw down and was limping much worse. It was late but I was determined to find the source of her pain. She got up on my bed and brought a halogen light over to see better and then quite easily I saw that the toe she had injured around 4 weeks ago was red, hot to touch and swollen and when I checked the nail closely there was a fluid oozing out from underneath it. Definitely infected and quite painful for her, she normally tolerates all my investigations quite stoically but this one she wasn’t having a bar of. So I contacted Ken via email (again!...I had emailed when I got home asking about 5 different questions regarding missing a treatment, low WBC and about a trip to Kalgoorlie for competition we had planned.) and asked what I should do. He recommended bringing her in and getting her on some antibiotics, he wasn’t at Murdoch on Wednesday but he told me to talk to the Intern Amy Lane. So I did so and with Tim’s help by lunchtime Wednesday she had commenced her 15 day course of Clavulox. Ken seemed to think she’d be fine with the low WBC to go to Kal and compete but due to the toe thing I decided against it. By Saturday and Sunday she was moving fine and the toe looks good, no sign of infection but I just felt it would be better to play it safe now that to run the risk of putting her already compromised immune system under any pressure. So the toe, the low WBC and my car slightly overheating Tuesday afternoon decided it for me, no Kal for us. Disappointing but in the end my decision was very lucky. Tim took my car to the mechanic Thursday, turns out there was a small hole in the water pump and I may have reached Southern Cross if I was lucky but no further! That combined with the shocking weather made me quite grateful in the end we weren’t going! So we just did some UD work on Saturday and Spryte and Cypher got some agility work. Sunday was really bad weather wise so we stayed indoors and I worked away on the catalogue for ACWA’s upcoming double trial on Saturday July 14th.
So here we are at Tuesday. I’ve just dropped Raven off at Murdoch with the hope her WBC is great (but not too high!) and that she receives her cyclophosphamide treatment today. She’s put on half a kilo and weighs 17 kilos now! I’m laying bets that it is 2.5. We’ll see, they have strict instructions to phone if she can’t have treatment so that Tim can pick her up. She really is not a fan of the place, whining when we get there now, wanting to leave. She gets all happy to see Geoff the Onco Nurse though so that’s something, he no doubt spoils her. Fingers crossed the next post will be about how brilliant she’s doing and how much fun she had on the weekend at Sunday’s trial.