Logan steps up

*Edit / afterthought – always check the floor for yesterday’s 4:00 p.m. amantadine capsule on the kitchen floor before assuming the worst. Gargamel. No wonder it’s been a tough 16 hours or so. 

It’s been interesting seeing Sir Logan step up to the plate as Tipper winds down. Logan was “unsocialized” when I adopted him. Scared of every. thing. He spent the first three days here trying to find an escape out of the house. It took the next several months for him to trust me enough to lay down by my side. To be fair, Tipper has been somewhat of a jealous-type, which never made it easy for Logan. But, Logan has become the barker, the guard dog. (He will need major re-programming this summer!)

Tipper, my strong boy, is indeed winding down. The hardest times are between appointments -those flashes of hope. We see Dr. Petty for acupuncture tomorrow, thankfully. Last week, Dr. Petty told me that Tipper is not even close to an end in terms of pain management. Boy oh boy. What felt like relief a week ago is not so much so today.

Regret is a silent killer, I think. At the end of my furry children’s lives (I’ve lost two of my own fur babies during my adult life), I find myself looking back through the decade and change I’ve spent with them and see junctures when I might have made a different decision. I know in my heart I made the best decisions I could with the tools I had. But still.

I have zero regrets about Tipper’s amputation. It gave him seven months of full living. I do regret that I didn’t find the time or the money to look into rehabilitation for him early on. But, again, with his blistered pads, I didn’t think it was wise. I did the best I could with the tools I had. Hindsight is 20/20 and all that.

So, here’s an update on what I’ve learned.

1. Dry needling is painful. Extremely painful. Excruciating.
2. Timing with pain meds is everything. Everything.
3. After some reading around, I’ve learned that pain management opinion on rest vs exercise has changed toward continuing to move rather than rest the sore spots. I figured Tipper should rest rather than overdo it. But I can see that his muscle mass has been devolving.
4. Tramadol seems to help when everything else has failed. Dr. Petty told us to drop the tramadol because it didn’t really do anything that Tipper needed. But, I have given it to him the odd time during the past week when he’s restless and panting and has already had all of his other medication. Whether it’s pain control or more likely, a sedative effect, it seems to settle him.
5. It sucks to have ancillary pain kick our butt before cancer does. I feel a little warped about that. Like I’d rather Tipper die from cancer than have to put him down from pain. But there it is. It feels a little bit like I was fighting the wrong war. I know better, of course. But still.
6. It’s out of my hands. There is a higher power out there, whatever you want to call it. The what-ifs and the should haves don’t really mean anything. There’s no one thing that works for everyone.

So, we’ll see how acupuncture goes tomorrow. And ACIC on Wednesday. I think Dr. Petty is experienced enough with hospice care that he might be able to give me some feedback about Wednesday. I feel like I want to see an x-ray to know for sure what’s going on inside baby’s body, but I also feel like I know that mets are spreading. I’ve already decided that further treatment isn’t what Tipper wants. He’s tired of vet visits. Metronomics from home might be an option, but not if it requires us to go in for bloodwork too.

Right now, baby is panting in a whole new way I’ve never seen before – laying down and panting with his eyes closed. That can’t be good.

I think we’re drawing close. However, I’ve settled down from where I was a couple weeks ago thanks to the members of this lovely Tripawds group.