Dear friends,
Can I tell you how absolutely ROTTEN it is to be sick? Now, I am sure you know this yourselves, but us dogs and cats being the animals we are - I mean, if it doesn't smell too bad, or taste absolutely nasty, or fight back, it must be edible, right??? I know that my Mom has a hard time sometimes explaining this concept to some of your owners, who are always asking her why you are eating poop or grass or mulch or rubber bands or cicadas - my, they have a lovely crunch, don't they? I really like them when they are in season - and those big moths, too. But I always vomit up the wings in a pile on Mom's nicest rug. (I just don't understand why that bothers her). And mulch has a nice piquant flavor, I think. And poop - heavens! Now THERE'S a nice treat! Why don't our owners realize that there is a lot of good usable protein in it? To us, it doesn't look bad, or smell bad, or taste bad to us - so what's their problem when we eat it? These owners of ours.....I just don't know sometimes!
But I have something sorta sad to tell you. I am asking each and every one of you to think good thoughts for me, OK? Because I have a BIG problem right now. I want to tell you that I am really very sick. I have kidney failure. This column of mine for July and August is going to be all about how to take good care of your kidneys, because I don't want any of you to have to feel as poopy as I feel right now. I will have to tell you about what is happening to me and about how to protect yourself a little at a time, because I feel very weak and I have to dictate to Mom instead of typing it myself. And she is tired because she has to stay up at night to take care of me. I can't eat anything, and I have to have a catheter in my leg and I have to get fluids all the time, and lots of medicine, too. And the meds calm down my tummy some, but not enough, and they make me sleepy, too. It is terrible feeling this sick! I am all wobbly on my legs, and I gag even when I smell the food that Mom fixes for Hebert or Canuke or Emmett. I used to love to jump up onto a chair and then the table to get Emmett's food but now I can't jump at all. I'm too tired. And it's hard to sleep good, because the fluid pump that pumps the fluid into my veins makes a noise.
I bet you didn't know that there are different kinds of kidney failure. In Western medicine, we call them acute (happens real fast) and chronic (happens slowly over time) kidney failure. In Chinese medicine, there are a lot more kinds and they are all treated differently but that is very complicated and I'm too sick to tell you about that right now. I have the acute kind. I was feeling really good until last Saturday, when I started to slow down in the afternoon. I didn't eat all of my supper that night and I vomited a bunch of times overnight. I didn't want to eat at all Sunday and my Mom knows that I always, ALWAYS love to eat, so she drew some blood Monday morning as soon as we got to work. She x-rayed my belly, too. She saw that I had really big kidneys and was a little dehydrated, so I got some fluids while we were waiting for the lab results. And we started some medicine to kill any bad bugs inside me and some things to settle my tummy. Everything tasted bad and I threw most of it up so now I am getting most everything by lots of shots and twice a day the Nurses put a tube down into my stomach to give me the things that don't come in a shot. I hate that and I let them know it, too!
Mom was very sad when she saw that I had a BUN of 123 and a creatinine of 8.5. That's because those tests are supposed to be lower - a LOT lower. The BUN (that stands for Blood Urea Nitrogen, and it is an important test to see if your kidneys are working right) is supposed to be less than 25, and the creatinine is supposed to be less than about 1.5. And all my electrolytes are bad, and my urine is full of casts and damaged cells and bacteria and is very dilute (those are bad things, too - your urine is supposed to be very strong and nice and clear). We don't know why this is happening to me, but Mom says it could be from an infection of some kind, maybe something like leptospirosis (more about these bad bugs later) or a toxin, or a lot of other scary things. We hope the blood tests will tell us.
Mom did not want to tell me that a lot of dogs die from what is happening to me, but I read it in a book so I hope you will think LOTS of good thoughts for me. OK? I have too much stuff to do to die right now, like educating all your owners with my column. I really think your good thoughts will help. I asked Mom and she says she believes that it helps, too. I am pretty tired now, and it's time for more IV fluids, so I am going to stop telling you about this bad stuff. But I will write more when my tests come back and I will also tell you more about what you can do to keep your kidneys nice and strong and healthy. This is really important, so I hope you will check my columns every week to see what I have to tell you. And please think those good thoughts for me, too.
Your friend,
LIZZIE
