Aspen.

At the beginning of 2023, I told myself I was going to write a new blog every day that Bill was gone on this current rotation. That lasted less than 3 weeks, but not because the intention wasn’t there. I really wanted to keep writing, but I lost the motivation when my Bitty Baby got sick.

On Friday January 6th, I was giving her a bath & noticed a ping pong sized knot in her neck. Of course, I freaked out & tried getting her into an emergency vet clinic, but couldn’t. Luckily, I was able to get her into our normal vet clinic the very next morning. They couldn’t immediately pinpoint what was going on with her but wanted to do some blood tests & see if they could figure it out. She had also started to lose weight. She should be around 21 or 22 pound & at the worst point, she was down to 16 pounds. The first picture below was 4 days before I noticed the knot on her neck. If you look closely above the tag on her collar, you can see her skin droops down; that was from the knot. In the two other photos, you can see how skinny she was.

Over a period of 8 weeks she had a lot of blood tests done, an ultrasound of her belly, an endoscopy, more blood tests, three diet changes, and several different rounds of antibiotics, probiotics, & steroids. At one point in time I was administering five medications per day, one of which had to be given three times a day, every 8 hours. I was terrified the knot in her neck was lymphoma. But the first doctor we saw wasn’t convinced it was. Then, he got to a point where he thought maybe it was lymphoma but he didn’t tell me that directly. I had to drag it out of him, but looking back I understand why he didn’t want to diagnose her with cancer without ruling out other things first.

The day before the photo below was taken, I got home from the gym & she refused to eat. I tried everything but she just flat out refused. I sat on the floor in my kitchen, holding her & just cried & cried. I remember thinking, “if my tears could heal her I would cry them all.” She would barely eat & even when she did it was just a bite or two. We got to a point where I was spoon-feeding her baby rice cereal & eventually jarred baby food just to get her to eat.

We went to Texas in February & I thought she was getting better but almost as soon as we got back to Washington, she took a bad turn again. There was one Friday night that she was doing really bad & I thought I was going to lose her. At the end of that same month, she got hospitalized for about 2 days so they could monitor her & do the endoscopy to see what, if anything, was going on with her GI tract. The thought was she had two issues independent of each other: Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) coupled with a protein-losing enteropathy (hence the rapid weight loss) & an infected lymph node. After the endoscopy & additional bloodwork, they officially diagnosed her with IBS & the protein-losing enteropathy. However, they couldn’t figure out why every time she got off antibiotics, her white blood cell count dropped significantly (by the hundreds & at one point the thousands). The remedy was to keep her on a steroid, which she will likely be on for life & do a full 30 – 45 days of antibiotics to get rid of whatever infection was lingering. As for the knot that kept coming & going, the Internist thinks it is a salivary gland that kept getting infected. Fortunately, it has been over a month since the salivary gland was infected, so right now we are just leaving it alone. But if it gets to where it is always infected or swollen, they may decide to remove it.

It has been almost 2 months since her hospitalization & I am so happy to report that she is doing 100% better. She is eating & drinking like normal & she has been gaining weight. At her last check up & blood test which was about 2 weeks ago, she was at 19.5 pounds. She is finally acting like her normal self. She is very vocal (like any other Frenchie) & at her absolute worst, she wouldn’t even use her voice or be happy or interested about anything.

We have been through a lot together, but I am so glad my girl is doing better & is still with us. She was worth every bit of it.

Recent pictures of her at my parents house. She loves it there & loves hanging out with their chickens, especially the little Bannies (she is staring at them in the 3rd picture).