What a Week

Whew! I am so ready for this week to be over!  It seems like so much has gone wrong and it's been such an overwhelming week.  I'm praying desperately that this week is about to get better.

If you follow me on Twitter you will have seen that my aunt and cousins were in a car crash last night.  Normally I would call it a car accident but someone 100% across the line in the oncoming lane of traffic and hitting them head on isn't an accident.  Thankfully they were all treated and released last night and, although they are sore and shaken up today, they are all alright.

You will also have seen that we have had a scare with Luca.  On Sunday we noticed that he was lethargic and was fearful of jumping up on the couch or our bed.  However, on Monday he was pretty normal and even had fun on a long walk in the snow with Jason.  On Tuesday he was fine also but a little more hesitant to jump.  Yesterday morning after Jason left for work I saw that Luca was shaking pretty badly and so I called the vet and took him in.  After thoroughly examining him she found that he didn't exhibit any signs of pain during the examination but his stomach was tight and so the doctor felt like he might have eaten something.  She did some tests including a full blood scan and everything returned normal results and so she sent him home yesterday afternoon.  However, when Jason picked him up he noticed that he was limping very badly (he was walking normally yesterday morning).  Jason had the vet reexamine Luca but she felt like it was just his kneecaps (Yorkie's have kneecap problems) and so she gave him some pain medicine and told us to have him rest.

Last night Luca was limping but was getting around ok.  We laid him on a heating pad on our bed while we watched American Idol and while we knew he didn't feel good we thought he had just sprained his knee or something.  When Jason got up and took Luca out he couldn't really put weight on his right leg.  By the time I got back downstairs with Charlotte Luca couldn't put any weight on either of his back legs and I rushed him back to the vet.  After doing some contrast radiographs (??) she determined that he had a herniated disk and they referred us to a regional hospital for surgery.  When the vet told us she was hopeful that Luca would be able to walk again we really started to worry.

We are so thankful that my parents live so close and are so willing to come and take care of Charlotte.  Knowing that she was in such good hands today, while we took care of Luca, really helped ease our burden.  We took Luca over to a neighboring town where the hospital was and spoke with the vet there.  They performed the surgery this afternoon and Luca is currently recovering at the hospital.  They said that the surgery went very well but they have not minced words about the fact that his recovery will be long and hard.  We got to go and see him after his surgery and he looked so sad laying there under the towels trying to wake up from surgery and get warm.  They will keep him pretty sedated tonight and will wake him up gradually tomorrow.  We will go visit again after Jason gets home from work tomorrow.

There are so many things that we're thankful for.  For a regional vet hospital that's so close where the vet has performed 3000 of the surgeries that Luca needed.  For a vet that referred us quickly and told us exactly what we needed to.  For parents who can come quickly to take care of Charlotte.  For the technology to repair something like this.  For friends who bring you hot chocolate and bagels because you're having a bad week.  For such a great hospital that is staffed 24 hours a day and will let us come visit after office hours (we were so impressed with this facility!).

It has been a really stressful day to top off a really stressful week.  We are feeling better though now that Luca's surgery was successful and he is recovering.  We hope that since he's so young he will recover quickly and regain his ability to walk quickly.  Another blessing was that when I got home and tried to feed Charlotte this afternoon she started nursing again and so her nursing strike, hopefully, is over.  We had been planning on going to the coast this weekend to watch my dad get a very big honor and, sadly, we aren't going to be able to go so that we can be here for Luca.  We hate to be missing out on that but will definitely be there in spirit.  Hopefully today was the last stressful day for a while and things will be getting better quickly.  We so appreciate your prayers and thoughts over the past few days.  Please continue to pray for Luca's recovery and my ability to do everything for him that he needs during the day while also taking care of Charlotte to the best of my ability.  I'm a little nervous about how I'll be able to handle that when I'm here by myself.

The other day I mentioned that a negative about this technological age is that it's hard to avoid reading information/opinions that you don't want to read or that are false.  But I think the benefits far outweigh the bad.  It made me feel better this morning to be able to tweet about Luca and know immediately that we had so many people praying for us.  The same goes for blogging.  I've received numerous generous comments from my post the other day about Charlotte's strike and everything I read was so helpful and encouraging.  I am so blessed to have such wonderful friends in real life and in blogworld.  Thanks for praying for us, encouraging us, and sharing our trials with us!