4 and 11

Four more radiation treatments and 11 more days until the burn is at its peak. I probably shouldn't write this while I'm sobbing, but I think this process is awful. She is in a lot of pain, at times you can see her side twitching. I'm trying not to cry while she is around me so I don't make her nervous, but I'm not having much luck. The good news is that she still has an appetite and perked up when we gave her a hot dog. And she swallowed it down as if there isn't a care in the world. I remember when I had my tonsils out, I would look at the clock to see when I could have my next pain med. That's kind of what I'm doing now. She has 30 minutes until her next pill.

We have managed not to poison her this weekend which is good. She hasn't thrown up. We have started an "Arrow getting better on dope" chart to keep track of her meds and so far so good. I feel like they didn't give us quite enough information when we left the hospital on Friday. We're both wondering if her wound is infected because we don't know what it is supposed to look like.

She still keeps us laughing though. We took her in the back yard this morning to go to the bathroom. She's not walking much. Arrow is a dog who really likes to go and poop in private. She will go deep into the woods and find a private spot to do her business. She has always done that. This morning I tried to tell her she could poop in the lawn that it was OK we would clean it up for her. But no, she climbed the hill and took a few steps off the path to do her business. Then she stood there and stared at us. I of course thought that she was standing there because she was in too much pain to come back down the hill. So we tried to call her and entice her to take the necessary steps. But she just stood there. I asked if she wanted some help and took a few steps toward her when she started to walk down the hill AND proceeded to grab a stick! It was like she was saying, "I so don't need your help -- and I can play too!"

We resorted to the lamp shade this morning to give her wound some air time. They told us a shirt was fine, but again, without much instruction we don't know if it continues to be fine as it gets worse. Is it better to air it out? Keep it covered? I don't know. So we decided to give her a break from the shirt. She looked so damn cute in the lamp shade. She wouldn't move for like 5 minutes. She stood there staring at us as if to say, "you can't be serious. I'm now on strike until you get this thing off of my head!" But finally, Sally opened the dishwasher behind her to give her a little prodding and she came over and got into her bed in the living room. I of couse wanted to gate off the stairs so that she wouldn't climb them with the lamp shade on while we were gone. But before I could do that, I was upstairs brushing my teeth when I here little footsteps in the bedroom. Sure enough she again showed me that she is still quite capable!

She's a little trooper.