(no subject)
It hurts so much to see those I love suffer in pain. I often wish I had the ability to heal. I would take my mothers bad knees. I would take away my dads strokes. I would take on all of their pain and make it my own, if I could make them well. Including my Mandy. She's still not doing very well. The diet doesn't seem to be making a difference. She has been sick a few more times. Bleeding from the back end worse than ever. We took more pictures. They're horrifying. I fear the worst. and can't find any solutions. She's not 100% diagnosed, but the vet believes she has pancreatitis. There is just one more blood test they can do to confirm it, but honestly, we just added up her vet bills and were astonished to find we have spend a total of $1200 so far. The last test is only another $80, but the vet is already pretty sure it's pancreatic disease. My sweet little Mandy. What would I ever do without her???
Every night around 11:30 pm Mandy and I head up to bed. On the rare occasion, she gets tired before that and I hear the little tippy tap of her paws go up the stairs to the loft and jump into bed. The first time she did this, Mark and I looked at each other and quietly smiled, then tip toed to the loft to take a peek at what she was doing. Yup there she was all cozy in the middle of the bed, looking at us like, "come on you guys, whatcha waiting for?".
But most of the time it's just the two of us going up to bed sometime between 11:30 and midnight. I don't know how, but I have managed to train her not to follow me up the stairs. Instead she sits at the bottom and waits for me to say "Mandy, come up". I think this happened because in the morning when I'm getting ready for work, she constantly follows me around. I'm often tripping over her while I run around trying not to be late. I almost always have to run up into the loft several times and it was always so annoying to have her follow me up every single time so I started saying, "Mandy stay" while holding my hand out in front of me. Eventually she stopped following me up the stairs but now our nightly routine is that I go up into the loft and crawl into bed only to realize that she only followed as far as the bottom of the stairs so I say, "Mandy come up" as I tap the bed. Immediately she pitter patters up the stairs, jumps into bed and nestles herself in my nook(the area between my knees and my stomach when I am laying on my side). And there we sleep for a few hours before she shifts to her blanket on the floor beside the bed.
Then comes morning. She usually hops back into the bed at around 5am. I usually shift positions in the night so now she nestles into my other nook(back of my knees/bum area). By 7:30 she stretches her front legs out in front of her and drags herself to the top of the bed where she wakes me up with Mandy kisses. We cuddle and snuggle for a few moments but if I don't get up shortly after she starts getting feisty and the kisses turn to nibbles, and boy do they hurt. She does this funny little thing where she only uses her front teeth to do these quick little nips along my arm, pinching just tiny bits of skin. I often imagine putting a corn on the cob there just to watch here eat it. Okay Mandy breakfast time. She follows me downstairs and latches on to the bottom of my pajama leg as I head to the kitchen dragging her behind me. Literally she does not let go. As I'm heating up her breakfast, she jumps up and down with her front paws on the back of my legs. If I take too long she sometimes jumps up and nips me on the ass. Yes that hurts! After that it's a race to get off to work.
This has been my daily routine since June. I kinda like it. soon it will change. I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm not even sure Mark has the ability to fully take care of her by himself. She doesn't eat when he prepares her meals. She is my only doubting thought at this moment.
It's not only about me anymore.