Thumper Thinks Out Loud

4:45 a.m.

I went to bed at 2 a.m. this morning; I stayed up a couple hours later than usual because Hank seemed a little restless and I didn’t want to leave him alone.

I awoke at 4:45 to the sound of frantic whining, so I got up and went downstairs; Hank had barfed all over the carpet and struggled to get up and go to the back door. I let him out, cleaned up his merry little pukefest, and then went outside to check on him, because he was taking an unusual amount of time out there.

He was lying in the grass; when I stepped onto the back porch he tried to get up so he could squat and do what he needed to do, but he just couldn’t quite keep himself up. So I tiptoed through the grass (looking out for previously dropped land mines) and helped him up, and back into the house. Then cleaned him up a bit, because he fell where he had squatted.

I couldn’t just turn the light out and go back upstairs. He looked a little anxious, so I plopped down in my chair and turned up the sound on the TV (which we’ve been leaving on at night, muted, so he has a better night light.) Hank was restless and grunted off and on, until around 6 a.m., when he finally fell into a deep sleep, where he stayed for a good 90 minutes.

So did I; once I realized he was snoozing, I let myself fall asleep, as well, with one mommy-tuned ear open in case he woke up feeling sick, or just lonely.

By 9 a.m. Spouse Thingy was up and I went to bed for 3 hours; he got a little food down Hank, and the called the vet to get the blood test results and to fill him in on my nocturnal adventures with Sir Henry Rustbucket..

His kidney functions are a little off; not enough to indicate kidney failure yet, but enough to explain how crappy he feels. It’s one of those things that without some further, and much more expensive testing, they really don’t know what’s causing it; it could resolve itself, or we could have to decide how much we want to spend to find out what the root cause is.

For now he’s on a new anti-nausea medicine, plus Pepcid (pepsid?) AC, in hopes that his tummy calms down. And there’s a different dog food that’s pretty bland, but something he doesn’t turn away from, so we’ll try this for a couple days and see how he goes.

If he doesn’t get better, I don’t really know what we’ll do. We can take the next step and have x-rays and ultrasound done, but I don’t know how much good knowing will do. If there’s a blockage, it’s not like he can have surgery to fix it; his liver can’t take the anesthesia. And we now how hard (and expensive) dialysis is for an animal… we already know we won’t put him through that.

Well, I know what we’ll do if it’s unfixable. Neither one of us will hang on for the sake of hanging on, to spare ourselves the pain of making that decision, but dammit, I’m not ready to make it.

Selfishly, I need for him to get better. I don’t want any other options.