say a little prayer for lucy

For Christmas this year, Joe and I got to spend some really nice time with my family, got some really wonderful and thoughtful gifts from loved ones and secret Santas, and........we got a sick beagle.

Our dog, Lucy, is a million dollar dog. Seriously. A million dollars. That's how much we've spent on her so far. For those who don't know me well, I am sarcastic sometimes. So be aware that we haven't literally spent a million dollars because don't even have a fraction of that, but you probably get the picture.

Anyway, we were planning on driving out to California with my parents and sister the day after Christmas (yesterday) to help prepare my grandmother for her move to Phoenix. We were going to help pack, visit with family and drive my grandma's car back to Phoenix. Well...that was the plan, anyway...

For the past week or so, Lucy has been acting much unlike herself and over the past couple days completely lost her appetite altogether. She started vomiting on Christmas Day and had a really bad fever that night. She woke up in fairly good spirits the next morning, when we were planning on heading out to Cali, but then she got sick again and we made the call to stay behind.

We took her to the vet first thing and they did some bloodwork. The tests they did came back showing that Lucy's liver enzymes were really high and her t-cell and platelet counts were really low. They think this means that all her antibodies are trying to fight something in her liver. The this morning they wanted us to bring her back for a bile acid test to test her liver function. IN this type of test, they take a blood sample to see the baseline level or bile acids, then they feed her, and two hours later take another blood sample to see the level of bile acids. Basically, what they are looking for is any change in levels of bile acids. For example, if the sample from before the meal shows a low level and the sample after the meal shows a high level, then that means her liver isn't working the way it should. Oh goodness...I'm really hoping it doesn't turn out that way.

We were so ready to drive to California yesterday and I'm really sad to not see family, but I am actually pretty glad we were able to get Lucy some help. They hydrated her, gave us a bunch of meds for her and now we're just waiting for the test results, which should be ready in a couple days!! It's kind of been a bank breaking weekend, but I just really really REALLY hope they figure out what's wrong so that we can fix it. It's so sad seeing her so lifeless. And it's so sad because she can't just tell us what's wrong, you know?

The poor beagle breaks my heart.