The Fight in the Dog, Part II

Sorry for the delay in updates. We had a crazy couple of days over here.

The first vet visit revealed: her heart murmur, diagnosed this spring, is a little worse. It's moved from a 2 to a 3 or 3.5. That's on a scale of 6. X-rays revealed that her heart is enlarged, from the extra work it goes through to make up for the valve that doesn't close properly. It could have led to a fainting episode, the scary episode I detailed in the last post. The vet seemed quite sure that was what happened. The progression of the disease is hard to gauge and hard to treat; it's controversial and none too cheap. Some dogs live years and years; some just live weeks. But, since she's been living with it for at least a few months now, I figured it will be a good long time. I was feeling so-so about the visit, sad that she's getting worse, but reassured she wasn't going to drop dead at our door.

Then this morning happened. I noticed Molly was a little more lethargic than normal, but nothing that immediately concerned me. I mean, dogs get tired, too, right? Then it ame time to leave. She heard my keys jingle and immediately jumped up, but when I realized I had forgotten something and went looking for it, she got confused. When I made it back to the door, she couldn't find me, despite my repeated calls for her to come "bye-bye" with me. I could see her shadow on the floor, her paws going one step to the left, then one to the right, as though she couldn't choose where I was calling from. I thought it strange but she eventually figured it out and I sort of immediately chalked it up to my paranoia.

Then we walked a few more feet. Molly, instead of doing her usual cute prance, was shuffling her feet, floppy, loose. Her head wasn't pointed up, but rather in the down position that usually indicates her dog-guilt over an accident or toilet-paper-eating incident. We turned down the long hallway that leads to the street where I park my car. She stopped at least three times and turned to her left, where she thought the door should be, and bumped her head against the wall, as though I'd opened the door for her. She was several feet away from the door.

When I got her to my parents' house, she was no better. Limp-limbed, uninterested mostly in exploring the house, running into my legs, running into the cabinets. I couldn't stop crying. I tried to hold myself together, but holy hell, it's really hard when someone (something, for you purists) is hurting and you can't help. She was responsive when I called her name and that sort of thing, so I felt at least confident enough to leave her there for a few hours, with a call put in to the vet's office.

The vet called me back around 11. My mom had reported that lil Mo was still pretty despondent. The vet told me that maybe it was something neurological, so Mo should come back for more tests (read: $$). I took her in about an hour ago. When I picked her up at my parents' house, she bounded ot the door, jumped on my legs, wagging her little nub-tail. Like my little Mo.

Mom threw up her hands. "Weirdest thing, in the last two hours, she's sorta revived," she says. (Mom, maybe it was your hamburger-and-rice offerings).

So she bonked into a cabinet at the vet's office but otherwise was sweet and gentle. Maybe not as feisty as I would have liked, but definitely improved. She sat nicely for her exam, and the vet reassured me that at least her heart was sounding stable and her lungs clear. There was perhaps some concern that Molly was having vision problems (she already has cataracts), but the vet also said that her pupils were responding and that Molly could definitely see fine.

They took some blood and did a pee test, and we'll hear about those results tomorrow morning. Think good thoughts!

For now, I can't tell you how happy my heart feels when I hear her bark at the slamming doors out in the hallway. That's my girl.