Feeling a little frayed

I wish the bar on what constitutes a "bad day" would quit moving on me.

Six weeks ago, a bad day was listening to my paralyzed, stapled-shut dog sob for hours on end. Locked in a cage, unable to move his legs, drugged out of his gourd, and snarling and snapping at us whenever we tried to take him out to squeeze the contents of his bladder onto a pad on the kitchen counter.

Now that dog can darned near walk, he can wag his tail and play with toys, and he has even started to pee a little bit on his own. So how can things possibly still feel miserable?

Well, it turns out Chickenbone's progress somehow makes this situation feel worse. For one thing, while he can sort of manage a very wobbly walk on our big rugs, he slips and stumbles on the wood floors. So whenever he wants to go anywhere in the house besides the living room, he sits at the edge of the rug and barks for someone to come over and "tail-walk" him to his destination. (He moves his front legs, and you hold his back end up by his tail. After awhile, this feels REALLY great on your back, especially when you are hefting a 12-pound infant in your other arm.)

Also, now he wants to jump back up onto his beloved couches, where he spent 90 percent of his days before his injury. Uh, Chickens? Hate to be the one to tell you this, but you're still crippled. You ain't jumping anywhere. Plus, even if he could physically jump, we simply can't let him do that ever again. Never, ever again can he get on the sofas by himself because the risk of reinjury when he leaps to the floor is just too great.

But today, with Sal back at work after his 10-week paternity leave, I was sitting on the couch when Chickens got out of his doggie bed, wobbled over to my feet, and started trying to come up for a cuddle. We can't even let him ATTEMPT to jump, so I had to stop him somehow, but I was nursing Mia so I couldn't do anything but yell at him. It felt awful! He is like the kid who had to stay home from school with the flu, only now he feels all better and he doesn't understand why he still has recuperating to do. He just sat there giving me his pleading eyes, and moving his upper body pathetically up and down in an effort to jump. It broke my heart.

Meanwhile, breaking my eardrums today was Mia, who was suffering some tummy and sleep issues. For four hours, she wouldn't nap, wouldn't eat, wouldn't do anything but squirm and wail in my arms. A couple of times, thanks to wild swinging and shushing and pacing and singing and bouncing, I finally got her to doze off in my arms. JUST IN TIME to hear Chickens sitting at the edge of the rug barking for a "ride" to his water dish, waking the baby and making mommy cry.

Folks, life is not easy around here.

I guess I just got used to Sal being around all day to help with the Chickens stuff. He had his baby, I had mine. At least we could divide the work. But one person dealing with both Mia and Chickens is very, very hard. If you're not neglecting one, you're neglecting the other. Neither one of them appreciates this very much, and they aren't shy about telling you so.

And then there's the pressure of all the stuff I want and need to do. There are basics, like taking a shower, doing a load of laundry, eating lunch. When I'm lucky, I get to a couple of these things. But there's a second to-do list in my head, one that every single day I intend to tackle. And every single day ends with absolutely no progress. Answering 800 e-mails. Writing in Mia's baby book. Digging my non-maternity work clothes out of storage and pressing and hanging them. Uh, BLOGGING. Putting away Christmas. Going through Mia's drawers and removing clothes that are too small, which is, like, everything. And don't even get me thinking about the third-tier list, stuff I'd just really like to do, but since they aren't necessities, they flat won't happen. Like going to a yoga class, cooking a fun meal, or reading a book. The hours just seem to slip right through my fingers, and it seems nothing gets accomplished except getting through the day.

That's a lot of whining, I know. Sorry. We just really need to get to the next part of Chickens' progress soon. So much of this will be solved when he's strong enough to walk through the house on his own. To that end, next week we are going to have a real physical therapy session at the hospital where he had his surgery. And we'll keep working on the pee thing. We take him out for a sling walks now - me holding the regular leash attached to his collar, Sal holding up his back end with a homemade sling (made of a leash, an old sock and rubber bands) and Mia in the baby Bjorn. We're quite a sight! And during these walks, we have seen many little spurts of pee come out, meaning there has been some neurological healing with his brain and bladder. (And can I just say, I never in my life thought I'd spend this much time squatting down to stare hopefully at a dog's penis. Not my most glamorous moments.) We still have to manually express most of his urine four or five times a day, but that's still improvement.

I guess I just need to dig a little deeper and find a lot more patience, because that's the only thing that's going to get us through to the other side of this mess.

Here, let's look at some fun pictures. Here's photographic proof of Chickens walking. He was eating a sardine (he gets one per day - they contain lots of good vitamins that can help with things like a back injury) and every time he licked the bowl it would move, so he'd walk to follow it.


Here is Chickens during his bathtub therapy. We plop him into the tub and wave treats back and forth across the water, and he walks trying to get them. He finds this setup terribly convenient, since if he gets thirsty, he just sticks his face in the water and drinks!


Speaking of baths, here is Mia's favorite time of day: bathtime with dad. Even if she is screaming her face off - as she often is at night - stick her in the tub and she's all coos and smiles.


Obligatory mohawk shot.


I love this one. I just wanted a picture of the cute outfit Mia's nana gave her. But it ended up being such a perfect snapshot of our life right now. Check out my messy, unwashed hair, and that big, wet spit-up splotch on my shoulder. And in the background, you can see the sad dog watching all the fun from his cage. Oh, poor everyone!


Christmas morning, Mia surrounded by a bunch of her presents.


And here is an exhausted husband and wife, staying home on their favorite holiday of the year. After Mia went to bed, we had a party for two, sitting in the back yard listening to a live mariachi band that was playing at a party down the street. We made it to midnight and well beyond, enjoying champagne and cocktails that resulted in my first hangover since January 2009. And that little Mia, she decided to sleep for 10 hours straight that night. So I guess life isn't all bad!

All we wanted for Christmas

This morning when we opened the door to his cage, Chickens stood up and walked out.

He may have wobbled like a drunken sailor, and after two steps he promptly fell down. But this is still huge, huge progress. Three or four weeks ago, he couldn't stand on four legs even with our help - we'd prop him up and he'd flop down like a rag doll. But this time, ever so briefly, we had dog who stood up and walked all by himself.

Now, there's still much ground to cover and many problems to solve. For instance, how to get the husband off the couch, where he has slept every night for three weeks because that's the only thing that keeps the caged dog from barking and waking up the baby. Or how to get Chickens to learn how to pee without his beloved lifting of the rear leg. But for today we're just going to be grateful for his Christmas gift to us.

Chickens on the mend

As we enter the fourth week of Chickenbone's recovery from emergency spinal surgery, I have a few hopeful things to report.

Last week after giving him a bath in the kitchen sink, I sat down on the living room floor to finish toweling him off. For one split second I relaxed my grip on his body, and before I knew it the HALF-PARALYZED DOG skittered on his front legs across the floor and flung himself headfirst into his old dog bed. The one that has sat empty for three weeks while he has lived in his crate. It was the most unbelievable thing - the little rascal was just so damned FAST. And when he hit that cushion, he began wriggling around joyously and wrapping himself up in his little blankets. You could almost imagine that he had been eyeing that bed from behind bars every single day, just waiting for the opportunity to make his great escape. After so many unhappy days, it was thrilling to see him act like his old self again. Here is the triumphant Chickens relaxing in his bed:


The other cool thing is REALLY cool: Sal's parents, who are two of Chickenbone's favorite people in the world, came over for a visit this weekend. And when they walked in the front door, that freaking dog wagged his tail.

HE WAGGED. HIS TAIL.

Now, it was the sorriest, most pathetic wag you ever saw. Especially if you knew how he wagged it before, when his tail was a springy little curl that popped up above his back. This new wag was fairly limp, and the curl is mostly gone, but who cares? It wagged, man. And wagging was not even within the realm of possibility two weeks ago.

I was really bummed that Sal didn't see this (and a bit fearful that I imagined it) but Chickens wagged it again today when we visited the vet for a post-op checkup. We got a pretty good report, all things considered. No miracles yet - he still can't walk, and he still needs help going to the bathroom. But in addition to the wagging tail, the vet also detected some small movement in his back left leg. So small we could barely see it, but it's there.

It may not seem like a lot to get excited about, but very slow progress was something we were warned about from the start. Chickens isn't even halfway through his two-month initial recovery period, so we still have lots of time for more improvement. Now, since he is in no pain and his surgery wounds have healed up, our focus is less on crate confinement (though he still needs to stay in there most of the time) and more on rehabilitation. Each day we will continue doing range-of-motion exercises, as well as sling-walking him in the back yard, encouraging him to pee on his own, and even doing water therapy in the bathtub.

So, pretty good news, no? Let's see how the next four weeks go. Even if improvements continue at this exact rate, we'll be overjoyed. And hey, maybe Chickens and Mia will learn how to walk together! AWWWW!

Smiley

Colic or not, it's all so easily forgotten when your baby learns how to do this:

The C-word

Introducing the most annoying question since "So, have you had that baby yet?":

"Do you think it's colic?"

Oh my, does this question make me crazy. It's just so pointless. I mean, whether it IS or IS NOT colic, how exactly is this label going to help? Let's say it is colic. Does that mean I get to go out and buy the special colic pills that make it all go away? Will we get a visit from the colic fairy, who will sprinkle my baby with the magic cure? No! So spending even one precious sliver of time trying to decide if my baby is colicky - which isn't even an official diagnosis ANYWAY - seems completely stupid. So don't ask me if it's colic, and especially don't ask me if I happen to be in the third or fourth hour of wildly swinging, shushing, bouncing and rocking my wailing daughter.

If I sound a bit edgy, it's because I live in the house of horrific noises. It's a vicious cycle that includes one pissed-off dog in a cage who whines and barks to get out, which wakes the sleeping baby, who howls and screams at being woke up, which gets the dog all agitated, causing him to whine and bark. And I don't mean to lay all the blame on the dog - sometimes it's Mia who gets the show started with her fussing, which wakes the dog and gets him riled up all over again. Once in awhile, the cacophony grows so unbearable that we take Chickens out and hold him for a little while, just to stop the madness. But we can't just go plucking the dog out of the cage all the time, because (a) he's supposed to be RESTING IN THERE, DUDE, and (b) acknowledging his barking in any way just exacerbates the problem by teaching him that barking works. In an ideal world, we'd ignore him until he stopped. But ideal worlds definitely do not contain sleeping infants.

So, yes. We've had a lot of fussy baby around here lately. But there have also been many things that are wonderful and not ear-splitting at all, and if I hadn't been so busy with the paralyzed dog, I would have been sure to write about stuff I don't want to forget about Mia's first six weeks:

- When we came home from the hospital, there was a banner hanging in our living room welcoming us home. It was from Chickens, who probably had a little help from his dad.


- Mia was born with the little tufts of dark hair on the edges of her ears. I'm told this is temporary, but at the moment I find it to be the most adorable thing ever. I call them her werewolf ears!

- She seems to like a little singing name game I play with her, involving variations of rhymes with her name. Mia Tortilla is my favorite, but we also do Mia Taqueria, Mia Mantequilla, Mia Flotilla, Mia Carpenteria, Mia BobbyBonilla, and so on.

- Sometimes when we have tried every trick in the book to calm Mia down, we have to bring out the big guns: Switching on the CD player so dad can belt out some Sinatra. It is already such a treasured memory, watching him in her room dancing and singing her to sleep - although if you know my husband, you know he does a MEAN Sinatra, so even more often than she falls asleep, she stays wide awake and stares up at him in wonder.

- After her umbilical stump fell off (a ridiculous FIVE WEEKS after her birth) we were finally able to give her a real bath. We just plopped her into the tub with me - so much easier than fiddling with keeping her upright an infant tub - and she loved it so much. Her eyes get wide as saucers, like you've just told her the most shocking secret ever. Also, it is surprisingly hard to get her entirely clean, particularly between the folds of chub on her arms, legs and neck. One time I counted the arm chubs - there were six! ON EACH ARM! Scrumptious little thing. Oh, and after a bath, her hair sticks up all over. I call her Porcupine Head.


OK, my time has run out! I hear the familiar sounds of a hungry baby coming from the bedroom, and if I tend to her quickly, we may be able to avoid this morning's "concert." An update on the furry patient coming soon!

A little bit of peace

The baby is asleep in her swing, the dog is asleep in his kennel, and the husband is at the gym. I should be taking this opportunity to nap myself, but I'm just so thrilled about all the blessed silence in this house that can't bear the thought of falling asleep and missing it!

So at least one of our suspicions regarding Chickens was correct - that big surgery collar was making him miserable. After the vet removed 12 industrial-sized staples from his back incision yesterday, we were finally able to take the damned thing off. And when we got home, Chickens promptly curled up and slept for three hours. Without drugs. We couldn't stop staring incredulously at that quiet little heap under the blankets. It seemed miraculous that the dog who kept us awake for a week with his crying could sleep like such an angel.

No other updates on his paralysis - his back end is floppy and limp. But the good news is that his spirits are getting higher by the day. Yesterday when the vet set him down, Chickens bolted across the floor like a little seal, "walking" with his front legs and dragging his back behind him. He went straight to his dad for a kiss and a cuddle. A few minutes ago when I opened the door of his cage, he skittered toward me and out onto the floor. When I gave him a treat, he started whining with it in his mouth (he does that when it's a REALLY good treat) and then he dragged himself back into the cage to bury the treasure inside his blankets. And about 15 minutes ago, he even growled at his mortal enemy, the mailman! So his back end aside, he is more and more our old Chickens every day.

Now we wait. It could be weeks or even months before we know whether he'll ever walk again, but there's still plenty of room to hope for the best. We just have to be vigilant about his care. Several times per day, we have a session of P.T. in which we extend and retract each of his back legs 30 times. We also have to help him go to the bathroom. Poops come out on their own, but pee only comes with some help, so four times a day we have to manually express his bladder onto one of those doggie pee pads. You guys, I am an EXPERT manual-canine-bladder-expresser. It was really difficult at first, because I was so nervous - you have to push kind of hard, with your hands all over his back end where the surgery happened. Plus, well, it's just not easy to locate a dog's bladder with your hands and squeeze it in just the right way that makes pee comes out. The nurse who taught us how to do it was like, "Oh, don't worry - it's just like milking a cow!" Ah, yes. Very helpful. I'll just fall back on all of those cow-milking talents I picked up in college.

Later today we're going to take him to the back yard and let him sniff around. See if we can help get his brain and his bladder talking again. We're also very excited about giving him his first bath, now that the staples are gone. I mean, during those first dozen or so potty breaks, let's just say the farmer had a tough time aiming the teat at the bucket. The vet also said we could let him out of his cage for short, supervised periods. Let him scoot around and feel like he's part of the world again.

Life with a dog who requires this much attention, plus an adorable 5-week-old baby who is even more demanding, is hard. But when I start to feel like I'm losing it, I try to think back to where we were even five days ago, and I realize we have already come a very long way through this storm. And I'm hoping that five days from now, and five days from then, life will settle back into something that - even if it isn't - will feel kind of normal.

Turkey day, Chicken nights

Hi. So remember how I ended my last post with "See you guys later, I'm going to get some sleep now!"

AHAHAHAHAHA. No. That is not what happened. Chickens did, in fact, quiet down long enough for me to snuggle into the chair in Mia's room and drift off for approximately four seconds. Then the crying started again, and then it got louder, and then it turned into crying mixed with barks, yelps and howls. By the time he had reached five and a half hours of this suffering, I couldn't take it anymore. I called the ER vet, who said we should bring him in. We didn't know whether he was in pain or just really pissed off about being in a cage and, you know, paralyzed. But regardless of the reason, healing requires rest, and he was clearly not getting that.

So for the second time in a week, we packed up the baby and the dog in the middle of the night and drove to the hospital. We arrived at around 4 a.m., and they said they'd like to admit him until the following afternoon. They wanted to monitor him, run some tests, and shoot him full of potent drugs. They told us to go home and go to bed. Of course, the moment I closed my eyes, the baby was wide awake and demanding her breakfast. Sal managed a couple hours of sleep before waking up to run the Thanksgiving Day Turkey Trot, where Mia and I watched him cross the finish line of his first 10K.

After Thanksgiving dinner at my in-laws' house, we returned to the hospital to get Chickens. They still weren't sure whether his distress was because of pain or sadness and frustration, but likely it was a great deal of both. So they replaced the pain-medication patch on his skin (which had worn off the day before) and injected him with some kind of super-painkiller. He was pretty well stoned out of his gourd. They also sent us home with a bottle of sedatives to keep him calm inside his cage.

It was a really good night. He was feeling so free of pain that he even showed a few brief flashes of his old, lovable Chickenbone personality. When we put some dry dog food in his cage, for the first time since all this began he gobbled it down. (Though the drug patch gives him the munchies when first administered - seriously.) And did I ever tell you how one of his favorite things is to get himself all wrapped up in a blanket from head to toe, like a little burrito? Well, even with his useless back legs flopping around behind him, he started nudging the blankets in his cage with his nose and teeth, and we watched incredulously as he somehow pulled one over his body. It was unbelievable. It was like seeing OUR Chickens again.


Then we all collapsed into bed and had an incredibly peaceful, uneventful night. And how I wish we could have strung two such nights together, but last night the crying began again after my 2 a.m. date with Mia. It wasn't as shrill as it was on The Very Bad Night, but it was enough to tear my heart into pieces as we laid there listening to him. (Luckily, I didn't break down crying myself because I'M TOO TIRED TO CRY! Silver linings, you guys. Silver linings.)

The crying went on for about 10 minutes before we got up to give him more pain medicine, but even that is an ordeal because his appetite is crap. He doesn't want treats, and he ESPECIALLY doesn't want treats with pills in them. Sometimes it can take more than an hour to coax him into eating something. But even after we got him to take his meds, he cried for an hour. This is an hour we spend busting our brains trying to troubleshoot the problem. Does the ticking clock above his cage in the bedroom irritate him? Is he cold? Does the fan bother him? Is he lonely? Our minds race trying to figure out how to help him. One thing we realized is that he rarely cries like this during the day, when his cage and his family are in the living room. So at 4 a.m., we got up and dragged the cage back out. We turned on the TV and hit the couches with blankets and pillows. He quieted down, and we all slept for about an hour before Mia woke up for a feeding. (I would whine more about not sleeping if I wasn't so relieved to finally be in the daytime again. Daytime is so, so much better than those endless nights.)

We just have to get to Monday. On Monday we get the staples taken out, and Chickens can stop wearing the big collar. He HATES the collar. Check out how he glares at us when we put it on him!

Scary Chickens! Anyway. Let's end this on a positive note. I'm afraid to think about this too much, because I don't want to get my hopes up, and I'm trying to brace for the worst. But when we were at the ER on Thursday morning, the vet did a little diagnostic test by propping up Chickenbone's back end so he'd stand on all fours. When they did this a week ago, his legs flopped down like a rag doll. But this time, he stood on his own for maybe 10 seconds. Which is AN ETERNITY in paralyzed-dog-land. It means he is getting a little bit of tone back in his muscles. Sal and I also wonder if his increased pain in the past few days doesn't mean he's regaining some sensation back there. Maybe we're just kidding ourselves, but sometimes for sanity's sake, we just need to indulge in a minute or two of hoping.