I Wish I Weren't Me Right Now....

I've put off posting this for a few days. It's taken me a while to get what I have to say together. The news on Slate is bad. When I got him into the vet Saturday morning, he just crashed. He went into congestive heart failure. They immediately started him on oxygen and double dosed him in IV Lasix to get the fluid out of his lungs. By late Saturday morning, they had stabilized him. Saturday night, he was stable enough to be taken off the oxygen. By Sunday morning, the heavy breathing and coughing had stopped too. Good news for the immediate future, but REALLY bad for the long term. They have put him on three additional medications to hopefully get his heart to respond. So far, it has not. Dr. K warned me that it might be this way...that his heart may just be too damaged, but not to give up hope. It still might respond in the next week or so. We are all just keeping our fingers crossed. That little dog is tough as nails, so I can't give up on him yet. I somehow knew, deep down, that there was some bad juju hanging in the air around the house. I just get these "feelings" you know. Anyway he's still in stable condition, so we get to pick him up and take him home today. We have instructions to only let him go outside during the coolest parts of the day, keep him calm, and keep him cool. No physical exertion in any way. I'm happy that I still have him with me, if only for a short amount of time. He's not in pain or suffering and o.k. for now. My father had congestive heart failure too, so I know the rules of the game. It can happen at any time. I spent most of the weekend with a box of tissues, reading MANY encouraging, supportive e-mails from my wonderful friend Pennie. I'm just going to try to make the most of the time I have left with him. It's going to be hard, I know. Let's just say that he gets ANYTHING he wants to eat from now on, provided it's not salty. It's just one day at a time from this point forward. I know that this could be worse. It could be Casey or another member of my family, but it still doesn't make the hurt go away. Please send any prayers and good thoughts our way.