{"id":3578,"date":"2006-03-01T08:35:43","date_gmt":"2006-03-01T14:35:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/gazette\/2006\/03\/01\/abbye-update-the-hits-keep-coming\/"},"modified":"2022-01-28T16:06:09","modified_gmt":"2022-01-28T22:06:09","slug":"abbye-update-the-hits-keep-coming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2006\/03\/01\/abbye-update-the-hits-keep-coming\/","title":{"rendered":"Abbye Update: The Hits Keep Coming"},"content":{"rendered":"

I apologize for the lack of positive posts lately. I really would like to write about less consequential or more uplifting things but life isn’t always like that. I’m sure you understand. What I do know is that this too will pass, so don’t give up!<\/span><\/p>\n

Well, there’s no easy way to put it so I’ll just lay it out: Abbye is blind, probably as a result of diabetes. The shocking thing is how quickly it came on, although we’ve suspected a tendency<\/em> toward diabetes for a couple of months, based on her weight loss and copious water consumption. The blood tests weren’t out of line, however, and so there was nothing to do but monitor her.<\/p>\n

She apparently took a turn for the worse while we were on vacation (isn’t that how it usually happens?). She spent all day yesterday at the vet clinic where they could administer insulin and monitor her reaction, and she’s there now, to repeat the process. The good news is that she responded well and by the end of yesterday her blood sugar was in the normal range.<\/p>\n

We don’t know if she’s got a full-blown case of diabetes, or if it’s actually a temporary condition caused by the Cushing’s Disease. Her quick response to the insulin yesterday seems to favor the latter diagnosis, in which case she could well regain normal pancreatic function and, hopefully, her eyesight.<\/p>\n

Right now, she seems to be able to distinguish light and shadow. It’s very difficult to determine the degree of blindness in a dog, particularly when it’s in a known environment like its home. Abbye’s especially hard to read, as she’s so cautious in her movements anyway; she doesn’t play with toys or romp through the yard or the house, and so we don’t have that baseline to measure against.<\/p>\n

However, she stumbles over curbs and steps and occasionally will turn too soon and brush a doorway before going through it. We also set up a simple obstacle course at the vet clinic yesterday and she had trouble navigating it, following the sound of my voice.<\/p>\n

On the positive side, she seems to be feeling well, all things considered, and is still eating and drinking. Her hair is beginning to reappear, although it’ll be a long time before she’s got a full coat back.<\/p>\n

Our primary hope is that the blindness and the diabetic indicators are temporary. We’ve had a diabetic and blind dog in the past, and it did not turn out well. Abbye deserves better.<\/p>\n

I don’t plan on giving daily blow-by-blow updates on this, but I will let you know if anything significant happens. Thanks in advance for caring about the little dog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wherein we find yet more indication that life doesn’t always unfold in the ways we’d like it to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abbye","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3578"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6369,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3578\/revisions\/6369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}