Catching Up

Well, I've got some catching up to do! It's been a crazy sort of week. Mark has developed some new and rather worrisome symptoms. But let me back up a bit.

We found a dog! Well, Judy Herring (Jason's mommy) called and asked what we were looking for, etc. She has seven dogs herself, and so (obviously!) knows and loves them well. She told me about a young dog on petfinder.com and said she'd be willing to go in with me and take a look at him if I wanted. So Saturday morning we set out to meet Rikki.

On the way to Salem with my boys, Kayte, and two of her friends (whom I had just picked up from a slumber party), the cell phone rang. Mark had gone into SVT and was on his way to the hospital with our friend Rod. I thought about turning around, but we were halfway to Salem by then, and Judy had taken this time out to go with me, and Rod and Mark both said to just keep going. So we continued.

We got there and discovered that Rikki was not for us. He LUNGED into the room, clearly intent on exploring and conquering. Brendan, from his perch on the chair in the corner, said, "We don't want that one!" But we fell in love with this other little mutt named Monte. He was busy enough to entertain the boys, but he was equally happy to climb up in our laps and be petted. Perfect! So we started the process to adopt him, although we were told that we would have to leave him there over the weekend to be neutered.

So I left there, drove 40 minutes back to Dayton, dropped off Kayte's friends, took my own kids home, and went to the hospital to see Mark. Got there to find that he had slipped back into SVT and this time they'd had trouble getting him out. They had been on the phone with the anesthesiologist, getting ready to put him under so that they could shock him. Thankfully, he did convert without that, eventually, but the medication they gave him made his blood pressure crash through the floor, so then they had to deal with that! It was a little scary to walk in on that and realize what could have happened while I was off dog shopping! Well, they kept him overnight, but Sunday afternoon, he got to come home.

Meanwhile, Kayte's plans to go to the fair with her friends had fallen through at the last minute. I didn't have anything planned for her because she had planned to be gone from Saturday afternoon until LATE Sunday. I have a party planned for today, but I didn't have anything going Sunday for her. And I was nearly broke! So I had to scramble in my mind for something not too expensive and somewhat fun to do so that she didn't end up spending her 13th birthday bored and alone. I picked up a cake mix and made her a cake. Then, after I got Mark home from the hospital and settled, I took her and two friends for pizza. Then we did a little browsing Third Street. (Kayte bought herself some cute earrings.) Then Rod, Billie Jo, and Shawn joined us for cake back at our house. Mark was even able to come down and join us for about an hour. It wasn't nearly as exciting as going to the fair, but Kayte seemed happy, so that's what matters.

Yesterday, I was getting ready to head back to Salem to put down the deposit on the pup when Mark's heart starting acting up again. I stalled, waiting to see how things would go, and ended up taking him to the hospital instead. I called the Humane Society from the hospital, and they quite graciously agreed to hold the dog for us without the deposit since I had "legitimate circumstances." I was really relieved. The kids have been SO excited about this dog. I couldn't exactly not tend to Mark, but neither did I want to lose the kids' dog!

Well, with that out of the way, I was able to turn my attention back to Mark. His cardiologist had originally said he wanted him up at OHSU, but he and the doc on call in the ER decided he was stable enough to come up later in the week as an outpatient. They put him on a new medication to hopefully keep his heart from slipping into SVT anymore, but they are probably soon going to do an ablation, which is like a cardiac catheterization, except that they go in and locate the area that is sending out the faulty signals and burn it so that it stops misfiring.

Late afternoon, they released him. I came home to a call from the Humane Society. The lady was SO sorry, but it turns out that when Monte is under stress, he bites. Hard. Oops. She was so apologetic. I said, "Hey, it's not your fault! I'm rather glad we found this out ahead of time." They know our situation and are going to help up look for a dog that will fit our needs better. In the meantime ... I guess we wait!

But for now, I need to get off my bootie! I need to cook up the "batter" for the blueberry ice cream for Kayte's family party tonight, and then I need to go school supply shopping. And then off to the park to meet Brendan's kindergarten teachers...