Fletch is Famous!

Just a short update: Fletch was recently on the news! We didn't get to see it because I suspect some intern forgot to email us to tell us about it. Our local morning news show on KSDK has a segment around 6:20 in the morning called "Sammy's Stars". I don't know who Sammy is or the origins of the segment, but basically, it's a short segment where they highlight a local pet. They usually give his name, his age, his interests, and why his owner feels he's a star. I submitted Fletch for consideration right after we found out about the osteo in a hope of bringing awareness to Fletch's situation and bringing people to the blog to read his story. They featured Fletch on September 5th. The link below takes you to the KSDK site.

http://www.ksdk.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=336391

On another note: Fletch gets his sutures out today! As long as there's no infection or nothing abnormal, he'll likely also get his first round of chemo! Please keep Fletch in your thoughts today. Though he has gotten a lot better, he's not out of the woods yet.

Again, we appreciate all your kind thoughts and words. We couldn't have gotten through this without the support of our amazing friends and family!

New Improvements!

Fletch and dad out in the backyard for the first time since the surgery!

We’ve had a couple of milestones the last few days.

First and foremost, Addie got to come home on Sunday after three days in ICU at the vet hospital. She is as wiggly as ever and is doing really well. We have to give her some medication to help protect her stomach for another 10 days, but after that, she should be good as new with no lasting issues. The vet said that her kidney functions wear normal and all her blood levels were where they needed to be. She even suspected that Addie ate the pills closer to when Sam and I got home in the evening, rather than closer to when we left for work that morning, so she’s confident that we caught it quick enough and got it all flushed out of her system.

As for Fletch, he conquered the back stairs for the first time! We’ve been taking him out on the leash out the front door because there’s really only one step for him to deal with. Over the weekend, he’s shown considerable improvement and mobility on his front leg and we’ve been walking him a little further each day, so on Saturday, Sam decided to see how he’d do going up the stairs in the back (there are about 8 from the ground to the back porch). He conquered them like a champ! It was like he still had all four legs again. The next time we took him out, we decided to let him outside the in back to see if going down the stairs was as easy as going up. Before we even had a chance to kind of coax him and encourage him, he was already down, no problems at all.

We’re very excited about these promising improvements with Fletch. We’re so glad that he’s been able to adapt to this new life in a fairly seamless way.

He goes in on Wednesday to have his sutures out and as long as there is no infection or other cause for concerns, he will likely start chemotherapy that day. From what I read, we can expect a few hours of treatment and monitoring on the first trip. He’ll likely have some fatigue and could get nauseated, but we will be able to get some meds to help with that and it shouldn’t affect him too bad. We’re very anxious to start this next level of treatment so that Fletcher can get that much closer to being happy and healthy.

Stay tuned for an update on Wednesday after the vet visit!

More bad news...

Addie after we first got her

So it’s been an especially exhausting and challenging month. With Fletcher being diagnosed, Sam and I have put a majority of our energy into making sure that he’s comfortable and that his pain is well managed. He’s been doing a lot better and we’re so thankful to all of you for your continued thoughts and support.

On Labor Day, we got a very unwelcome surprise when a neighbor stopped by to let us know that my car had been broken into overnight. The thief broke out the entire back passenger window and caused some damage to the frame. Luckily, the only thing they got away with was an AT&T router that had been mailed to us in error. AT&T had no record they’d sent it to us and asked that we just drop it off at a UPS Store to send it back, so I had it in my car to drop off when I got a chance. I never got the chance. So we’re lucky in that no further damage was caused and nothing of more value was stolen, but unfortunately, we have to have the car in the shop a few days to have that fixed.

As if our luck couldn’t get any worse, yesterday, we came home from work to Fletcher’s pill bottles all on the floor, one of which was completely chewed through and all the pills missing. The medication is called Rimadyl, which is a mild pain reliever and anti-inflammatory. Our regular vet had given us a large bottle when Fletch was first diagnosed because, if we’d decided to take the “keep him comfortable” route of treatment instead of the amputation, he would have needed quite a bit of the Rimadyl. We’d gone through a fair amount of the bottle, but Fletch’s dosage was half of a pill every twelve hours. We estimated that 15 or so pills were missing.

Normally, we’d been keeping the pills on a high shelf near the kitchen and the areas were blocked off from the dogs during the day. Yesterday, Sam and I were running late for work, so after giving Fletch his morning medication, we just put the pills in the middle of the dining room table out of reach. A few months back, Addie started chewing up things, including the TV remotes, so we’d gotten into the habit of putting the remotes in the center of the dining room table out of reach and we didn’t have any more problems with it. It would never have crossed our minds that the pills would be reached in the center of the table. Addie would have had to have jumped onto the table to get close to them and she still would have had to use some pretty impressive and persistent reaching tactics to be able to get a hold of the pill bottle. So you can imagine our shock when we realized what she had done. We immediately called the vet we’d been taking Fletch to as they also have a 24 hour emergency clinic. They said that the Rimadyl would start to cause kidney failure, but we likely wouldn’t notice symptoms until the 2^nd or 3^rd day, but that they could start treatment on Addie that would limit the effects of the medication on her system and save her life.

We were at the vet in half an hour. Addie will have to stay hospitalized for about 3 days with constant fluids through an IV and be given activated charcoal and other medications all while they monitor her kidney levels and functions. The treatment will set us back another $1000 or so, but without it, Addie would have died from kidney failure.

Please keep our little greyhound family in your thoughts. It’s been an incredibly rough month and I’m not sure how much more bad luck Sam and I can take. The good news is that if bad luck comes in threes, then we should be done, but we’re still not buying a lottery ticket any time soon.

Doing A Little Better Everyday!

The past couple of days have been challenging. On top of having to keep track of Fletch's cocktail of medication, we've also been dealing with some of the side effects of those medications. For the most part, the pills just kind of drug him and make him groggy, but there's always a period a few hours after taking them where Fletch gets very restless. He's up, he's down, he's up, he's down, he's wandering aimlessly, he's whining for no apparent reason, he stares off into the distance, he stumbles and falls over, and worst of all, he sometimes has trouble with holding his bladder. Luckily, we've been able to hang out with him a lot more over this long weekend and take him out a lot more. 

But every day gets better and better. The first day we brought him home was a nightmare. We didn't know what to do when he whined, we didn't know what to expect as far as side effects and we didn't know how to handle how odd he was acting. The next day, we got a little better at reading him and learned a little bit more about his needs. It's been a steady learning experience for us and we've been able to see how much better Fletch feels every day, so that's been really reassuring. 

Today, Fletch is walking pretty good. He's even doing pretty well on the hardwood floors. As you can see from the picture, things are slowly getting back to normal. Addie is still hogging the chair even though we keep telling Fletch he can't get into the chair quite yet. We still have to keep him confined to the living/dining room, but he's mastering the area pretty well. We're hopeful that in a few more days, he'll be less shaky and be able to walk a little bit further. He's even managing the two stairs that lead from the front porch to the yard pretty well without assistance. 

It's been tough and a little aggravating, but we're getting there. Fletch goes in for his first consultation for chemo on the 12th, so we'll keep you all posted about that as well.

Finally, the sincerest thank you to everyone who has donated money for Fletcher's treatment. It's really helped out a lot and we don't know what we would do without all the kind and thoughtful people around us. 

Fletch hanging out with dad!