Wait and see

1600 Central Standard Time has come and gone and I haven't heard from Zac yet. The lack of information is causing me to bounce off the walls. But we'll come back to that in a moment.

I took Toivo to the vet today. I'm not sure how much you know about my one-eyed wonder. The short version is Toivo lost an eye to an infection after he was scratched by a cat when he was a puppy. His monocular status means that he has some issues with depth perception and large, excitable dogs that want to wrestle with him at the dog park. I didn't want Toivo originally. My family had a cocker spaniel, Dusty, who was getting old. We knew that the time was drawing near that we were going to have to put him down. I was living with a boyfriend at the time and one day he announced that he was bringing home the dog that his grandparents had gotten as a puppy the previous year. (They didn't want the dog anymore.) I was indignant. I didn't want another dog. I had a dog at my parent's house that was using that part of my heart. Dusty was the dog I had been through junior high, high school and college with. I wasn't about to replace him prematurely with some prone-to-running-away farm dog.

My former boyfriend brought Toivo home anyway. I looked at the ragged looking dog and told him, "You are not my dog." Within the first three days of Toivo living with us he had been neutered and thoroughly de-ticked. I had no idea so many ticks could live on a dog. I spent a couple of days sweeping up piles of dead ticks. [shudder] I was hesitant to like Toivo, and I think he knew it.

Shortly after Toivo's arrival, the time came to put Dusty down. I won't go over that part of the story because I'll start crying like I always do. I came home from the vet, eyes red and swollen from crying the whole drive home. I sat down on the couch and started to cry again. Toivo was sitting on the other side of the room from me, just looking at me. After a few seconds he stood up, crossed the room, jumped up onto the couch next to me, laid down and put his head in my lap. I cried harder. "Ok," I told him, "You are my dog."

So Toivo has been with me ever since. We have lived in St. Paul in my old apartment, in Minneapolis with Grandpa, and Oklahoma and Hawaii with Zac. He's been on long road trips to and from Oklahoma, from Oklahoma to Nebraska, and the great road trip of 2008 that had us drive from MN to NE to Seattle, WA via Yellowstone National Park. He's been a great traveler through all of it.

One constant in Toivo's life has been seizures. Finnish Spitzes sometimes have them. Breeders are careful to try and track epilepsy in the breed, but Toivo didn't come from a breeder. For many years Toivo would have a seizure maybe every 6-8 weeks. Then in the last couple of years they happened about once a month. The vet told me that if they every increased in frequency beyond that I might want to consider putting Toivo on some medication. I've been pretty good at keeping track of when Toivo has seizures. He had one last week and I thought to myself, "Didn't he just have one?" When I went to record the seizure on the calendar, sure enough, he had had one just two weeks prior. I checked back and the next most recent seizure was about two weeks before that. Going back to about mid December, his seizures had started to increase in frequency. (Though they seem to be about five minutes shorter than they used to be when they were monthly.)

So Toivo and I went to the vet today. The vet complimented me on how good of condition Toivo is in. His weight is good, his muscle tone is excellent, his teeth are in good shape, his blood work looked good. We discussed the seizures and the vet gave me the run down. He said that if the seizures were something new that it could be indicative of a brain tumor, but that since Toivo has been having them his whole (known) life that it was probably epilepsy. He said there were two drugs we could put him on, one more aggressive than the other. Because Toivo's seizures were still only every two weeks the vet suggested we use the less aggressive drug, potassium bromide. He said that the best case scenario is that the seizures stop entirely. The next best case is that the seizures cut back to maybe one or two a year. The worse case scenario? The drug doesn't work and we have to try something else.

So, getting back to my impatience from the first paragraph of this post. One of the reasons I decided to take Toivo to the vet to get this straightened out now is because Zac is up for orders right now. We're waiting to see where we move to next. (Permanent Change of Station or PCS in military-speak.) Odd are pretty high that we're moving off island and we could be moving anytime between June and October, depending on what orders Zac gets. It worried me about the possibility of Toivo being stuck in his crate on a trans-Pacific flight and having a seizure. I'm not sure if he'd be more likely or less likely to get hurt being relatively confined. I figured I needed to give us as much time as possible to get his medical situation straightened out before we leave.

So what's with 1600? Zac said that the available orders would be posted at 1600 CST. I know he was anxious to see what was available because he'd like to put in his request for orders as soon as possible. He has a couple of possibilities of where he might go. I just want to know at this point. This will be my second PCS. I had to pack up and move alone from Minnesota because Zac was in El Salvador at the time. This time I have a house-full of stuff, a husband and two dogs. It will be a little bit of a larger undertaking, but I'll have Zac to provide some assistance this time so it may end up being a wash in terms of how easy it is. (Or isn't.)

So we'll start Toivo's medication tonight and watch him for side effects and hope for no more seizures. And I'll continue to pace around the house until Zac comes home to see what happened with orders.

Speak of the devil, Zac just walked in . . .