I’ve had a sick headache with some dizzy spells on and off for a month now, was slowly getting better and then, wham, in bed again. I can’t function when the room is spinning. I went this morning to my internist for a scheduled 6-month follow-up exam and he said I should take a glucose tolerance test. It will be at the hospital, take about 5 hours, and I will be periodically drinking sugar water throughout the day. What’s not to like?

I am also to have a CT scan, so I scheduled it and, since Ed was due to have one and has canceled three dates because of guardian duties,I made his for the same day. He’ll have to keep this date now, because he will insist on driving me. The facility is in Fort Myers, more than an hour away. I’ve driven him back from tests when he was not supposed to drive, but he was awake and kept close tabs on me. Me doing it alone freaks him out because there are sections of the route that are a six-lane undivided highway and there is a huge suspension bridge with a toll booth that goes over the Calusahatchee (river that empties into the Gulf). I think I can manage it, but also feel more comfortable at this stage, not doing that quite yet.

We took Brunswick to a new vet because he was not doing well at all. We both thought he was dying. We used a vet on Pine Island, not in Fort Myers where we had been taking him. The new vet is an Indian woman who took over the practice from the former vet, whom we had no confidence in at all. She took Brunz without an appointment and set up a regimen to deal with an eye infection, an ear fungus, no appetite, down 6 pounds in three months because he is not eating due, she thought, to nausea. She gave us meds: an antibiotic emulsion, a pill for nausea, a pill for appetite stimulation, a serum for the back of his neck for pain, a different antibiotic emulsion for his eye, drops for his ears. And he still has fleas, or has been reinfested. He is allergic to them, and had sores on his back. So she switched his flea med from Revolution to Frontline. And, of course, he still gets phenobarbital emulsion every 12 hours for epilepsy. I typed the schedule into the computer and printed it out – it was really involved. But we’re getting it all done. Brunswick has been super cool about all of it, seeming to know we are helping him. Poor little fellow. He’s eating again, a big relief, and is a little perkier. And he has become particularly bonded to us, sleeping between us every night, favoring one or the other backside in turn.

The dismay here is that we had Brunswick at the vet 2 months ago – he had tests, but no new meds. Could everything he is going through be totally attributed to an allergy to fleas? We have had a lot of confidence in this vet, but now that we have seen the new one, I don’t think we’ll use him again. The visit was expensive but it would have cost twice as much with the old vet.

Well, that was the week, and now to bed.

Xx, Teal