certain readers might know that I have a four legged friend named Princess. she’s a 14 year old English Golden Cocker Spaniel, and has been with me for most parts of my life… discounting the past few years I have spent in Australia.
recently (just yesterday, actually), she has been feeling rather ill. nausea, diarrhea, cocking of the head, loss of strength in her hind legs. in essence, I thought it was her arthritis acting up again since I was told that this had happened before earlier in the year.
at the vet, some blood work was done on her and all readings came back to be within the range of normal function. a twitch in the left eyelid was noticed, and nystagmus was observed in both her eyes. the doctor did not arrive at a diagnosis as there were a couple of possible explanations for what was happening to her, namely an inner ear infection or a neural occurrence. she likened the neural occurrence to be something similar to a stroke, but not a stroke per se; whilst the inner ear infection was linked to the sensation of nausea (since the sense of balance is attained via the ear canal fluids). antibiotics were dispensed to try to deal with a possible inner ear affection, as well as an anti-inflammatory shot plus an anti-nausea shot.
I can’t help but feel very hopeless and terribly sad that my dog is going through such trauma. funny thing is, she still gets stimulated by the smell of food (be it hers or mine!) and she is still active enough to walk towards us when she smells food on the table. apart from that, she is resting most of the time, and does not have the strength to do anything else.
it has only been a very recent occurrence, and I’m just terribly worried about how the situation may pan out. I have entertained thoughts of the inevitable happening, but never did I figure that the day might be here so soon. like the vet said, she’s not in any immediate risk of passing away anytime soon, but that being said… would her quality of life be affected at all? would prolonging her misery for my selfish reasons of not wanting to make a hard decision make her suffer even more?
I hate being here now. I wish I was the irresponsible child, back in Australia and having a whale of a time away from this all. unfortunately, this is my dog (even though I do not pick up its poop or walk it anymore) and like it or not, I’ve got to face up to reality and make the decision when the time comes.
still doesn’t change the fact that I hate being here now.
o rly?
but here you haz strawberry nata de coco and chai tao kway :P