Where We’ve Been- Part 1

Well!  After having a long long stretch of very little happening, so much has happened lately I hardly know where to begin!

Oldest news first, I guess…  Pippin’s seizures have settled down to about once a week.  According to the vet, his seizures are surprisingly mild and with very few lasting effects.  Basically, the vet said that his seizures pose no great risk to his health.

But about two months ago, Pippin started having very strange, very violent cramps in his left shoulder.  It would come on at the slightest provocation, a little tugging of the muscle in a slightly different angle or something similar.  Then it would take thirty minutes or more of heating pads, remedies and cuddling before the cramp would go away.  The entire time, Pippin would scream in agony at the slightest movement.  Even knowing how bad he is about being dramatic, I couldn’t help but feel that very little of the pain he was expressing was not actually real.  His shoulder was completely locked up, and the muscles were pulled into a strange position.  It just looked painful.  Pip and I spent many a sleepless night trying to ease the pain.  He would get tired of resting on just one side of his body and so would try to switch to the other side.  This of course hurt him so badly he would startle me out of a doze with his ringing shrieks of pain.  If I was the one to shift and the bed under Pippin tilted the wrong way, he would holler me awake and we would spend another twenty minutes of massaging and comforting before he settled down again.

However, with consultation from the vet, remedies and lots of TLC, his shoulder began to lock up less and less.  According to the Doc, who used to treat racing greyhounds, greyhounds carry most of their weight on their forelegs.  With their fine legs and heavy chests, shoulder injuries are not uncommon.  He diagnosed Pippin with a probable rotator cuff injury.  However, he said that with the proper care, Pippin should be fine in a few weeks.  So, we diligently did all we could for Pippin; massaging, vitamins, rest, remedies and lots and lots of love.

A week or so later, I observed that Pippin seemed to be able to take more movement in his shoulder without cramping.  A great sense of relief settled over the household.  Everyone was finally getting a chance to relax.  But a few days later…

I woke up to the familiar sensation of Pippin’s seizure quakes.  There’s a certain rhythm to the way he shakes that makes it very clear that this is not just a temporary sleepy twitching.  Sometimes there is a bit of a warning; some shaking before the real seizure starts, giving me time to put him on the floor with a towel.  This time, I only got enough warning to be awake enough to see him shoot out from under the covers in the throes of a relatively violent seizure.  As he exploded out from under the blankets, I heard the horrible sound I had read about in books for as long as I had been reading; the sound I had hoped I would never hear; a sound that sent a shiver up up spine:  the snap of what I could only guess was a bone being broken.

to be continued…