How Life Happens: Valentine's Flub

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Valentine's Flub

Today was a bit of a Valentine's flub. It started out fine, but went awry somewhere along the way. Here is a bit of the recap:

I drove Julia into school today and all was fine
Emma woke up as usual and was all smiles. She even said an approximation of "hi" to the bus drivers when they picked her up. They also were surprised to hear her say a pretty clear "hi" so it wasn't just me. All seemed fine.
I headed off to a meeting in the office and after I was there about 15 min. and just starting to get into the topic my phone rang. It was the nurse at Emma's school telling me she vomited during PT and was running a low grade fever of 99.1. And everyone thought it was strange that she was crying when she got off the bus at school. She never cries when it comes to the bus....unless it's that I'm picking her up instead of letting her take the bus home. Off I went to pick her up at school - which is about a 45 min. drive from the office I was at.
When I arrived at school Emma all smiles. She wanted to eat when she arrived home and was pretty upset I didn't have more than one brownie to give her from her party at school. I was beginning to think she was faking it! However, she did need lots of cuddles and so we watched a couple of Disney movies until Chris and Julia came home.
Julia arrived home complaining of an ear ache and she decided she wasn't up to going to dance class. We suspected an ear infection and planned to take her to the urgent care center after I got home from Finnegan's vet appointment. Julia apparently cried a lot over the pain in her ear while I was at the vet so Chris decided to take her to the urgent care center. When they were piling into the minivan, Julia said it didn't hurt anymore. When I arrived home she was in great spirits and said her ear was only clogged. We are waiting it out and see how she feels in the morning. Both girls are off so if Julia's ear still hurts we'll either go to her dr. or to the urgent care center. I have a feeling a good night's sleep with no set wake-up time might cure the ear problem.
Finnegan had a vet appointment because we are worried about her. She lost 10 lbs. in the last couple of months and is not eating her food. Most labs do have problems with weight but it's usually they weigh too much not too little! We are worried it could be something serious since she does have a growth on her neck that is suspect. The labs on it came back inconclusive in the Fall so we are worried her weight loss could be a bigger problem. The vet didn't find anything definitive tonight. He did take blood work and we should have the results tomorrow. The X-ray looked good so it doesn't look like there is any cancer there (thank goodness!) and that gave me some peace of mind. I'm hoping there isn't much of a problem with the blood work, either, in which case it would turn out to be a very expensive cost for finding out essentially nothing. We're going to start feeding her some boiled chicken, rice and eggs and see if we can get some weight back on Finnegan. It just isn't the same petting and cuddling her when you can feel every bone in her body ;-( Poor Finnegan. The good news is she is just as spunky and overall great dog as ever.

So, today if feels like we've had Emma, Julia and Finnegan all pulling the wool over our eyes. And I don't have the fun Valentine's photos I planned to take today and we're ok with that.

Here's to good health for all! Happy Valentine's Day!