More on Beau

I think the "kreeping krud" is finally loosening it's grip on me. It better after spending nearly a week in bed and a heavy dose of antibiotics. The cough is beginning to loosen and I can finally breathe through my nose. Breathing is always a good thing, don't you think?

So between feeling lousy and worrying about Beau, I haven't been keeping up on my diary reading or commenting. Sorry. And of course that puts me way behind on everything else around here.

The Christmas tree is coming down today - I can't wait to get it out of here. And then we get to start piling everything in my living room/dining room into one end of the room. The guy that's going to fix our ceilings was out on Friday to give us an estimate and is ready to start. Don't know if I ever told you, but we had roof damage from a hail storm last September that caused water damage on the ceilings in three of our rooms. I just dread the mess that fixing all this is going to make, and all the extra cleanup work because you know that sheetrock dust and taping and texturing doesn't stay in one room even if you block off the room you're working in. It sifts throughout the house - yeck. Oh well, I guess when it's all over I'll do a REALLY good spring house cleaning.

So I've got that ugly situation to look forward to.

And then there's Beau. We got all the lab results back late Thursday afternoon. Not good. The vet gave me the name of the bacteria that he's infected with. It's about a yard long so I can't remember it let alone spell it. But it doesn't matter anyway. The most ideal situation would be to take him down to the University of Minnesota, have a CT scan done and then exploratory surgery to see if they can find the source of the infection. Price tag for all that starts at $5,000 and goes up from there with appropriate follow-up treatment. Needless to say there have been a lot of tears around our households since that dollar amount came forth. At this point we're going with he other option - he's on heavy doses of penicillin three times a day right now. Next Tuesday he goes in for another x-ray to determine whether the fluid level in his chest has changed (improved or increased) since the last x-ray and fluid withdrawal. They will try to withdraw more fluid - as much as possible. From there we'll keep him on the penicillin and just watch him. He may have to have several more x-rays and fluid withdrawals, but I guess we'll just take it a step at a time. That's all we can do at this point.

Lovely Daughter and Ole had a consultation with the vet on Friday morning. She told them that this method of treatment has a low success rate, but there have been cases where it has worked. She said it's fortunate that we caught this in its early stages so he has a better chance of recovery.

Well, guys, that's about it from this end. Sorry for all the gloom and doom. Keep your fingers crossed for Beau. Losing him would leave a huge hole in our lives.