Hope for the Best, Prepare for the Worst and Keep Smiling!

My two "babies"


Chompie and Tiara

I am a little bit of a pessimistic person, OK I'm a lot pessimistic. I don't try to be, but I am big enough to admit that I am.

One of my biggest fears in life is that something will happen to someone in my family. I am petrified that something will happen to either Chris or one of the kids, and heaven for bid they not recover from whatever it is.

If any of you have ever had a pet, you know that they quickly become a part of your family. When I worry about something happening to one of my kids, I include Tiara and Chompie in that fear. They are just like kids to me, and truth be known, Tiara is my first baby! I've had her longer then any of my others, and I love her like a baby. She just turned 4 years old last week, so we have been together for quite a while now!

The past couple of months Tiara has been kind of sick. She was kind of wobbly for awhile. She would have good days and bad days but when the bad started to outweigh the good, we took her into the vet to see what was the matter with her. The vet told us she had a middle ear infection and with some antibiotics, she should be fine. I guess the ear infection was what was causing her to be so dizzy and that's why she kept falling down. Her equilibrium was way off he said. We started the antibiotics that day and she seemed to almost immediately get better. After a few days, the antibiotics were gone, and she seemed to start "failing" again. Chris and I talked about taking her to the vet again this week to see if we needed to get another round of antibiotics.

On Saturday we let her and Chompie out to go potty and she seemed to be just fine. Chompie loves Tiara, and he thinks he can't do anything without her, including going to the bathroom. Sometimes Tiara isn't as fast as Chompie would like her to be, and so he always runs back to see where she is at. As customary, Tiara wasn't going as fast as Chompie expected and he ran back to find her. They got kind of tangled up and Chompie ended up kind of running over the top of Tiara. She fell down, but she got right back up and as she did, he plowed her over again.

This time she didn't get back up. Tiara laid on the floor, on her side, kicking her legs and kind of freaking out. Chris ran over to pick her up. She gets a little bit anxious when Chompie is too rough and we figured she was upset about Chompie plowing her down. Chris noticed one of her claws had gotten caught in the rug, so he took her claw out and stood her back up so she could go potty outside. She wouldn't stand up, she just kept falling to the ground.

Of course I was totally upset. I held her and tried to calm her down thinking that any minute she would jump up and run outside with Chompie. She seemed to calm down a little, but still wouldn't stand up, so I put her in her crate. That sounds mean, but she loves being in there especially when she is upset. We left her in there for a couple of hours and then I went to let her out. She still would not stand up! She was just sort of limp all over. From that point on and still even today, she can't walk.

Chris and I called the vet at home since it was a Saturday and they were closed. He was out of town, but told us he would see her that night as soon as he got back. We hadn't been able to get her to eat or drink all day long, and she was so out of it, and could barely hold her head up that Chris and I figured we would be telling her good bye that night. I truly felt like I was losing one of my kids and I was beside myself!!

At about 10:30 p.m. we headed over the the vet's office. The vet was very nice and was quick to kind of calm me down a little as he examined her.

He talked to us for quite awhile about possible reasons why she was acting the way she was. I kept waiting for the phrase, "She would be better off if we put her out of her misery", but much to my huge relief, he didn't say that.

He gave her some shots of antibiotics again, and told us to wait 24-48 hours and see if that helped her. He thinks she has a neurological infection of some kind and that it may be helped by the antibiotics. He thinks that is probably why she seemed to perk up when we gave them to her the first time. So we are going to try to give them to her for a longer period of time.

We were able to take her home that night, much to my great surprise. She still is not able to walk, but she is starting to eat and drink a little bit. We have to feed her by hand. She can't bend over to eat, and we give her water through a little hamster bottle.

She seems to be perking up a little bit, but I'm waiting for the 48 hour mark to pass before I start to panic again.

Right now we are just glad she is not in any pain, and is still with us. We will have to re-evaluate things in the next day or two, but hopefully things will work out and she will be back playing and chasing Chompie again in a day or two.

Until then, we are keeping our hopes high, and our fingers tightly crossed!