Bucky Update

It's been a long week. Bucky had nasty reactions to the pain killer and narcotics. He was up all night howling his little head off on Saturday and Sunday, plus most of the time during the day. He sure found his singing voice. No less pleasant, but more traceable was the vomit. We now have colorful patches on the living room carpet, looking rather like a world map.

After kicking down Dr. Larson's front door a few times, and $900 later, these are a few things we found out:

- Bucky has pancreatitis.

- Bucky has bad arthritis in both hips. The joints are bone-on-bone.

- There is a chance that Bucky has internal bleeding in the stomach.

- Bucky is on antibiotics for pancreatitis but once we get it under control we need to manage his hip pain. It will be a challenge considering his tender tummy against the pain killers.

- Bucky does not have cancer, abnormal growth, or serious ulcer, no obstruction in the digestive tract.

- Bucky's singing voice is very loud, especially between 2am to 5am. When he howled he almost seemed like he could pronounce words.

- Tramadol made Bucky lose his mind. He didn't seem to know who I was and where he was. It made me very sad, as I don't want to think about the unthinkable, not yet.

- If you need to give your dogs a pill, skip the cheese and use Pill Pocket. It's a soft treat that you can break apart and wrap around the pill. Works wonders.

In the mean time, the humans fared slightly better. Henry had a stomach bug early last week (insert sick people noises), and Bill caught up with him over the weekend (insert more sick people noises). No one got much sleep for a week. I told Trinket he was under strict order not to get sick.

In the mean time, I attended a job fair, and met the unlucky folks assigned to help me land on my feet. Job search, here I come.

A little bright spot to keep our hopes up! After burying himself in sand for days, Crabbe reemerged yesterday on the very tippy top of the big log. He molted and got bigger.