Update - Ava's really sick

[Stacy]

I just got off the phone with one of the Internal Med doctors at the emergency vet. Ava has a fever, and her abdominal ultrasound looked normal, but her chest x-ray shows some significant patchy infiltrates. The vet said that it doesn't look like pneumonia, but it doesn't quite look nodular like you would see in cancer either. They aren't sure what it is. T

hey're going to ultrasound her chest and try to get an aspirate that way, but if they can't they're going to keep her overnight and give her fluids and in the morning do something called a BAL, where they put fluid into her lungs and suck it out and try to get some of the abnormal tissue out with it. The vet sounded... not overly optimistic. Her labs on Thursday didn't show an elevated white count, so I'm afraid that it's not something infectious, but instead cancer. It isn't a typical presentation, but neither one of these girls have ever had a typical presentation for anything.

I can't believe this is happening. This was supposed to be something orthopedic. She was supposed to have arthritis. But I had a really bad feeling. And my bad feelings often have a way of being right. I just don't want her to hurt. She's such a good girl and she's had such a hard life. We haven't had enough time to make up for all the things that happened to her before. I just love her so much.

[Stacy]

We always do a taper with steroids, even short term steroids. That's why I was surprised that there was no plan for after this 30 day supply. I really do like the IMS, but I feel like after we did all the testing and couldn't find a solution she just gave up. Maybe we can't cure her. Maybe we can't even find the source of her illness, but we still have to take care of her. I'm not ready to give up on her. 

Mindfulness is for people who don't have such loud brains! I do like yoga though. I don't know if it helps my mind, but my body feels amazing afterwards. There's an old dance studio right around the corner from my house and I wanted them to turn it into a yoga studio, but they put a ballroom dance place in instead. I don't think that's going to work for me.

[Trudy Harlow]

You might try just writing all your questions down so you can get them out of your head and then take them to the vet and go over them there. Meditation is excellent but this should help a lot too.