I’m a Paranoid Pet Parent
One of the few times in life I think having pets is harder than having kids is when they are sick or injured. A child can tell you what hurts or what happened (at least past a certain age). I have knowledge about how the human body works and know for a fact that a runny nose will not kill a child. I know when to medicate at home, when to go to the doctor, and when, based on personal/family history, to push for a different treatment than the doctor might recommend at first.
I don’t have any of that with my dogs. If something happens when we’re not home, we can only guess. We can do some research online, but when everything starts with “here’s how this will kill your pet” I end up getting paranoid.
I mention this because last Thursday afternoon, I noticed that Larry kept licking June’s face, but I was tired and didn’t think anything about it. That evening, after a trip to the dog park, June was sitting in C’s lap, and Larry came up and started licking at her face again. C took a look and noticed that her lip, on one side of her face, was very swollen.
We have no idea what happened, but best guess is a bee sting of some other insect bite. We do some research, and everything starts off with anaphylactic shock. Talk about freaking me out. I could have come home to a dead Junebug!
But she’s not dead. In fact, other than wanting to scratch at her lip and getting annoyed with Larry for licking her, she doesn’t even appear to notice it. Well, other than having a hard time chewing on that side of her mouth.
Now, Smokey had been stung by a bee before and was treated with human antihistamine. So that’s what we gave June. It didn’t stop me from waking up multiple times during that night and needing to hear her move or feel her breathing in order to fall back asleep.
Everything seemed to be going fine. The swelling in her lip was going down, and she continued her normal behavior. (I will note that it can be difficult to tell if a Beagle is feeling lethargic- she spends most of time sleeping always.) But then, on Saturday night, C noticed that there was major swelling right behind the top of her jaw.
Since it was on both sides of her jaw, we could make the reasonable deduction that this was lymph nodes, not a swollen salivary gland. But still, swollen lymph nodes means a systemic reaction to the bee sting or an infection. And while this isn’t quite as scary as near instant death via anaphylactic shock, this type of systemic reaction (if that’s what it is) could lead to death.
Now we’re off to the vet. A single swollen lip we can handle, but a systemic reaction or infection is beyond us.
Can I just pause here to say how grateful I am for our vet office, where their regular hours are 7am-midnight, with 24 hour emergency care available? Because at that point, it was after 9:30pm on a Saturday night.
We called our friend J (who will be our roommate in a few weeks) to come keep Larry company and get in the car with June.
The vet agreed with our assessment that it was probably her lymph nodes. They were very swollen, swollen enough that the vet suggested getting her hooked up to an IV and leaving her there overnight because swelling like this could impede her breathing.
We were, of course, conflicted. It had nothing to do with the cost (though are vet presents this information as part of everything she tells us to help make the decision), but centered around the facts that:
1) We like having our dogs home with us
2) June still wasn’t acting as if anything is wrong. In fact, she was very upbeat and wriggly at the vet’s office, trying to get as much attention as she could
3) Unspoken by either C or I, the memory that the last time we left a dog overnight at the vet’s was Moree, and we didn’t get back in time for him to even know we were there at the end.
We opted for three shots- steroid, antibiotic, antihistamine and 3 prescriptions of the same and to take June home. The theory was that if her breathing started to become labored, we would notice and bring her back.
Once again, I woke up randomly through the night and listened for her, or sat up and reached across C to feel her breathing. And, of course, as a small dog, her breathing while sleeping is quite shallow and I would have to sit there a moment or two to be certain.
In the morning, she got her pills. She got them again late afternoon, and by evening, the swelling was way down. We will give her the pills for the full amount of time prescribed, but it is obvious that the problem is being properly treated and that she will be fine.
And I actually slept pretty well on Sunday night.