Buddy's home!

Hi everyone and thank you for all of your concern, thoughts, prayers for Buddy!

I'm happy to report that he's home from the hospital and is recovering well !! :-)

We're all so happy to be together again! Aruba missed him so much. It's precious to see how gentle she is with him.

I took Buddy for a follow-up appt with the cardiologist today ... we had lots to cover ... an exam, more chest X-rays, bloodwork, and more meds. She's very encouraged by his progress though, and he's taking premiere heart medications that will help him get and stay strong. Today it was sweet to see the nurses and vet techs at the cardio office responding to Buddy's recovery --- with hugs and kisses! Buddy is just so lovable!

Now he's home getting lots of TLC and a calm, comfortable environment to recuperate. We love you, Buddy!

Susan

Buddy's getting better !!

adorable patient

Hi everyone ~ they were able to take Buddy off oxygen late last night, and he remained stable through the night. That's great news!

Here are some scenes from our visits with him yesterday.....

Buddy has to wear a protective "cone" because he's a naughty (yet adorable!) patient and swipes his paws at the oxygen tubes and tries to remove his catheters:

He delightfully devoured the carrots (his favorite snack) that we brought:

The hospital has a "family room", complete with an oxygen hook-up in the wall, where we can visit Buddy in a more comfortable setting, rather than an exam room:

Again, thanks for all of your e-mails, thoughts, prayers. They're so appreciated!

Susan

broken hearts

Buddy was checked by his oncologist last week, and his lungs were fine thankfully, but the X-rays showed an enlarging heart.

So I took him to a veterinary cardiologist yesterday to follow-up on that ... and you can see that he was comfortable on the ride there:

But literally within the afternoon hours his health began to deteriorate before our eyes! He was barely strong enough for the heart doctor to do an echocardiogram, but it helped her diagnose him with acute congestive heart failure. OMG !! We were stunned, shocked, totally devastated. :-(

He needed 24-hour supportive care (oxygen, diuretics, etc), but wasn't healthy enough to travel far to get it. Even a moderate length car ride would be too stressful for him. So we rushed him from the cardiologist's office to an excellent emergency hospital ... just down the street, thankfully!! It's the same facility where Buddy had lung cancer surgery, so the staff knows and remembers our sweet Buddy (he's so popular!). It's a top-notch place with state-of-the-art facilities and highly-trained, specialized veterinary staff. So he's in really good hands, but it was touch-and-go through the night for him.

Overnight and this morning the ER doctors told me that Buddy is resting comfortably, and even ate! Today they'll be weaning him off oxygen, and depending how that goes, he could be released in a day or two. Buddy's such a strong dog! But, he's a heart disease patient now, so he'll have a lot of heart meds to take. But they will help his heart compensate for what it can't on its own anymore, truly a miracle of medicine.

Thank you so much for your thoughts and prayers for Buddy. It's so sad that a pup who has endured lung cancer now has a failing heart.

My heart hurts, too.

Susan

a note from Buddy

Hi everyone! It's me, Buddy!

I know that you've been waiting to hear about my mommy's trips to Creative Escape and Greece, and she can't wait to share all about them, but she has been busy. Part of it is because of me. I can tell that my mommy is really sad because I've been coughing more and something seems to be wrong with my lungs, even though my lung X-rays were clear in July. She sat up with me most of last night, and it made me feel better. She spoke with my oncologist's office this morning, and is taking me to the cancer clinic soon. So hopefully we can find out what's wrong. Maybe I just have a cold or something? But my mommy is worried about my lungs. I hope that my cancer hasn't come back, and that I don't have to go on chemo again. :-(

I'm sure my mommy will be back here soon with an update, but I wanted to help her with things today, so I'm blogging for her.

p.s. ~ today is my Grandma's birthday! Happy birthday Grandma, from me & Aruba!

Woof,
Buddy

who doesn't like a little sparkle?

Hi everyone!

I'm (still) sorting/editing my photos from Creative Escape, so I'll be posting about my fab experience soon! But I at least have a little CE teaser to post today.... some fun CE news to share!

During CE, I had the pleasure of meeting Rebecca Cross; she's the founder, owner, and creative director of Pink Paislee, a company that designs very popular scrapbooking products. Apparently the flowers that I custom-made to wear at CE had caught her eye ... they were in CE colors (aqua and red) and sprinkled with -- what else? -- GLITTER ! I wore them in my hair and/or attached to my nametag lanyard throughout the event. Turns out the ready-to-alter (plain muslin) flowers that I customized are made by her company! So she asked me for a photo of them so that she could post my design on Pink Paislee's blog, WOW !! Well, not only are they showcased on their blog today (along with my how-to), they're also on their Twitter and Facebook page! I'm thrilled, honored, and truth be told ... a little giddy.

I'm enjoying my 15 minutes of "celebrity", LOL. You can read her post and compare the "before" and "after" photos of my flowers HERE.

I am ... tickled PINK !! ;-)



Hope you're enjoying the holiday weekend,

Susan