The Senakams | Corgi + 3: October 2010

Hope everyone had a great Halloween! Especially if you're a Giants fan, I'm sure the sight of orange and black is making you feel extra festive (World Series... I can smell it, but don't wanna jinx it!).

Anyhoo... it's extra difficult this year deciding what to dress the duo up as, as they had this super smash hit last year as pharaoh and the spinx that you may remember.

I was completely out of inspiration when it occured to me that our life has been dramatic enough as is- what with Bryson's recent hospitalization and frequent visits to the vet- that we really don't need too much dramatization for our inspiration for this Halloween:

Bryson will play "himself", aka one sick puppy, and Eva, inspired by our excellent new vet, Dr. Jenny, will play... a vet.

Admittedly it's much less exotic or creative compared to last year's outfits. I bought this $15 vet outfit on amazon (that feels like it's worth 50 cents), spruced it up with some fancy pocket for her stethoscope and a new name badge that says "Dr. E, DVM" (yes, I stole that animal cross clipart that still has some copyright watermark on it. What can I say, a mom needs to be resourceful)

For Bryson, I wrapped him up with some gauze (hubby says it looks more like a white headband, sorry, Bry...), tied his paw up with some more gauze and a pink elastic, and "attached" him to an IV bag, and voila! We have a semi-realistic re-enactment of Bryson-the-patient (I think the grumpy expression helps too).

We attended a friend's block party, and here are some more pix of the rest of our day:

Dr. E is very diligent, making sure her patient's med is always titrated to the right dose.

Dr. E: Excuse me, you'll need my permission before petting my brother my patient

Check out our flickr album if you wanna see more actions from today.

On a completely separate note, in my oodles of spare time this past couple of weeks, I sewed Eva a couple of headbands. My hands were just itching to sew something (haven't done anything creative for ages), and I needed some project that can be completed in a couple of hours (or they'll just fall into the unfinished project pile that's dominating my work area).

Here's the first one, made by wrapping a 3/4"-elastic with fabric, with a couple of fabric flowers and burgundy felt leaves sewn on. I don't want it to be super girly, but I'm really sick of people asking if she's a boy even when she's Pepto-Bismol pink from head to toe. I think this combo looks cute but not too frou-frou.

I'll post about the other headband (hopefully) soon when I get some decent pictures of it.

By the way, did you notice that Eva looks more like a little girl than a baby almost all of a sudden? I think since she started walking (the day we took her and Bryson to the SF Giants Dog Day game back in September, which I have yet to blog about *sigh*), she seems to have grown overnight as a little person. As we fiddled with her outfit today and trying to get her to sit still many times in vain for pictures, I realize she really isn't a baby anymore. Feeling a bit nostalgic...

Can't say thank you again enough for all of your support through our ordeal with Bryson's health crisis!

It's been a couple of weeks since Bryson came home, in fact, tomorrow will mark his 2-week follow-up date with the hospital, where he'll have a repeat chest x-ray to see if the pneumonia has cleared. Judging by the way he looks (his eyes seem to look so much "brighter", kinda hard to explain...) and the way he's attacking his food, I'm hopeful that tomorrow he'll be declared officially over the hump. This is a picture of him and Eva bumming around a pumpkin patch this past weekend, doesn't he look great?

But there's still the underlying Addison's Disease that's causing all the mayhem that lurks in the back of our minds... And thus, this past week, we eagerly brought him in to the long-awaited appointment with the highly-recommended naturpathic vet. And boy, even though it was only one visit, I already love this vet!

Before I go further, I have to say again that I have the utmost respect for his regular vets- they diagnosed him with Addison's promptly and probably saved his life. But this new naturpathic vet is just so.... different. First of all, she easily spent over an hour and a half with us, going through his entire history, asking us everything about his health- from his recent illness, to his Addison's, his diet, his history before us... seriously, like everything. I don't think I've spent that much time with his regular vet cumulatively since we had Bryson (and probably not to their fault, it's just the way vet practices, not unlike human medical practices, are run these days).

And not only was she attentive, warm, she was so good about explaining everything (again, reason why we were there for an hour and a half). She also gave me tons of reading- including her practice's rating of different dog food products and diets (raw vs high quality kibble), the whole vaccine debacle (do you know that yearly vaccine schedules for doggies are completely unsupported by scientific evidence?), the basis of acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine in doggies, supplements for Addison's disease, etc etc. I really feel like I'm back in school again (but in a good way, of course!)

Another thing I like about her is that she listens to me, and truly takes my preference and concerns into account when deciding on a course for Bryson: I'm a pharmacist- I like drugs, or at least I've learned to trust them. I've also taken courses in Chinese Medicine and have dabbled a little in naturpathic medicine myself. I want to explore an integrated approach for Bryson, so while we're maximizing his health through optimal nutrition support and natural healing methods, I don't want to throw his life-saving pills away blindly in the name of going "natural". Honestly before I went in I was a little concerned that she would ask me to do just that, but turns out she completely understands where I come from- she's a "regular" licensed DVM, so she can (and does) prescribe all the medicines needed for her patients, while incorporating other naturopathic methods to help encourage the body to heal. To me, that's just good, sensible medicine.

And on paper, she has the best "pedigree", having trained under the famous "father of holistic vet medicine", Dr. Pitcairn (and don't worry if you haven't heard of him before, I've only heard of him since Bryson got sick. He's BIG, trust me).

So, when she offered to do acupuncture on Bryson right then and there, I barely even flinched. Yes, you heard it right, acupuncture, as in little needles stuck all over his body to encourage his doggy "qi" to flow nicely through his meridian, as such:

Crazy, eh? And you know what's crazier? She's so gentle and casual about it that he didn't even realize the needles went in! (He only jumped a little with this one near his butt- his "gall bladder" point, she said). Imagine Bryson just walking around like nothing happened with these needles sticking out of him everywhere (yeah, kinda like a doggy-hellraiser). He was so relaxed he even laid down to take a nap. It's pretty weird and hard to suppress that giggle initially, I have to say.

Nothing too dramatic has happened with his health since (and not hat I'm expecting any). He just looked a little better every day, probably from the combination of his "regular" and "naturpathic" treatments. We're going back in a couple of weeks for follow up, where we'll start to discuss more about his chronic maintenance (this last time it's more about helping him get over his current episode). I'm cautiously optimistic that she can help us navigate through this maze of medical problems for our boy. Will keep you all posted (and if you have any experience to share about taking your pet to a naturpathic vet- do share!).