12 _11 Early evening update

Man. What a day. Not that Elvis is doing worse, really, but that there comes a point where I'm up to my ears in medication and problems and I begin to think I'm losing my mind.

There is still a lot of wheezing and a lot of coughing going on. Stress, excitement and movement seem to be the main drivers.

I did finally talk to Dr. Walthall late this afternoon (she's had the day from hell), and we talked over some options.

The main concern right now after the wheezing/coughing is the blood in his stool. It's possible he's going into kidney failure (though that panel was excellent last week and he doesn't act the way other dogs of mine have acted when going into late stage renal failure). It's possible it's cancer. That's always a shadow. But the most likely culprit is yours truly helping him get more fluid down by giving him the smoked turkey stock. Even defatted and with very low sodium, it's rich. It just seems too likely that I've caused the problem. Right now, it's being addressed by giving cooked rice, kaopectate, yogurt and canned pumpkin. I'll keep an eye on it, but his stools are loose and that didn't start until today after a couple of goodly amounts of stock.

Dr. Walthall and I will look at this again on Monday if it's still happening, because it's also possible he needs a GI protectant. I know antibiotics can also sometimes loosen stools, so while it's in the back of my mind, my main worry is dehydration. So this stays as a "monitor and try to clear up with diet change."

He's getting his Clavamox twice a day in a little ball of food. This is the one thing that might change on Monday. Dr. Walthall can give him an long acting antibiotic injection, so if I'm not seeing improvement by Monday and need relief from pill handling, he'll go in for that.

His Enalapril is another twice a day, and that's going easy because, like the Clavamox, it's in a food ball and he scarfs if down. That's one thing you can say about Elvis: whatever he has that's going on really isn't causing an appetite problem. He's a proper little pig.

So the two main things now are the Lasix and the cough medicine.

The Lasix is really a no brainer provided he's getting enough fluid. I did give him a pill today rather than the liquid because he was drugged from the middle of the night Torbutrol. That's a once a day thing (and I've only got one more), so I'd like to get him back on the liquid tomorrow. That gets tweaked just about daily, so there's no real issue with it.

Back to the cough. It can get bad. Obviously NOTHING like it was two nights ago, but he's wheezing and the cough can get hacking. On a scale of 1-10 today, I'd give it a 2 or 3. Not bad, but I want him to sleep tonight.

I will give him a bit more rice, yogurt, kaopectate and pumpkin with a bit of water about 10. I'll also give him 1/2 of a Torbutrol at the same time. I'm going to have to go out and see how Guaifenisin reacts with it because I don't want to overdo it, but I do want that available if I need it later tomorrow.

So that's where we are. His weight is up to 8.8 lbs which is a significant gain for him, but since we've been pushing food/liquid, I think that may be where some of it's coming from.

Hopefully the night will be uneventful since everyone here needs a full night of sleep. I'll post in the morning on what's gone on.