I wish the kidney values were also in normal range, but most that I saw (the vet sent me the pdf of the complete results) really were only slightly elevated.  For instance, if a normal range went up to 44.4, his was 44.5. Or a normal range went up to 30 and his was 32.  So they were all pretty close to that normal range. I’m definitely relieved.

It’s been 5 weeks since his last seizure and hopefully (knock on wood) it will be a long time before he has another one.  But I’m expecting one, especially when Thursday and Thursday night hits since that is when all of his have occurred.  I find myself tensing up whenever he starts barking at something, because I never know – does he hear something or is he about to have a seizure? Nerve-wracking.

I hope everyone had a lovely holiday.  I cleaned the house on Christmas, because that’s just how festive I am. My husband had to work, but he brought me home a plate of their Christmas dinner they had catered in for them.  I also got a sugar cookie and a chocolate pretzel. I was so excited for sweets. lol.  My  husband has been dieting and exercising to get healthy, so we haven’t had fast food or sweets or pizza or any of that stuff in several weeks. That cookie and pretzel were like heaven to me. lol.  I’ve actually lost a few pounds myself in the process. I’m happy with that, but it’s never enough. My brain is so warped.  The other day I weighed myself and I actually thought, “you know, I might need to gain a couple of pounds.”  It wasn’t that I was necessarily too skinny (I was around 107.5 which I’ve been that and a little lower before) but I was probably dropping the weight a little too fast?  So then I ate more than normal that day, ended up gaining a little and then felt totally guilty about it.  But that’s what I wanted?  It’s kind of scary … being so wrapped up in the number on the scale.  I worry about that sometimes.  Thank God I’ve got my sweet tooth and love of food so I know (hope) I’ll never get too bad about it.  And at least I’m aware my thinking is screwed up.  Awareness is half the battle.

I want to redesign my Tom Glavine site but I have no clue what I want to do with it.  It’s just been this design for awhile now, so I feel like it’s stale.  And I found the most perfect photo to use in a new site design.  I’m not really sure the photo owner would want me to swipe it off their facebook and use it in a layout, but it’s so beautiful. It’s just screaming “layout! layout!”  Isn’t it pretty?

I’m still running and still averaging around 30 miles (sometimes more) a week. Back in November I took my first shot at 13.1 miles (half-marathon distance) and managed to do it in 2:09:30. The time wasn’t great, but I was pleased I was actually able to run that distance. I attempted it again today and managed to shave a few minutes off my time, finishing in 2:04:45. Again, not the best time in the world,  but I was thrilled I improved on it. I’d LOVE to be able to get it under 2 hours but based on my usual running pace for all of my other runs, I’m not sure I see that happening. We’ll see.  For now, I’m happy with it.

In other news, Ratchet had a seizure, his first since starting on the Phenobarbital over a year ago. Sigh. It was a little after 3 a.m. the day after Thanksgiving. (Note: How odd that his first two seizures were mid-day on a Thursday and his last two have been in the 3 a.m. timeframe of Friday morning. Hmm)  He was sleeping on our bed and heard the cats make noise in the other room. So, he and Clank jumped off the bed and ran in there to check things out. Ratchet came back, got on the bed, laid down and a few seconds later stood up, began barking and growling and walking in circles on the bed and BAM..seizure. It lasted probably a minute and it took him a good 30 minutes afterward to calm down. It had been almost 6 weeks since we dropped him down to the 30mg of Phenobarbital a day and the vet said it’s possible that his body was just now really getting at that low dose, which might be the reason for the seizure.

We bring him into the vet tomorrow for additional bloodwork (to see if his levels have dropped any) and provided they have, I guess it’s just a wait and see when the next seizure will be kind of thing.  If he starts having them again like before the vet said he may just switch him to Potassium Bromide, which doesn’t affect the liver like the phenobarbital does.

I tell you… I don’t miss those seizures. They are such a hard thing to witness, knowing you just have to sit there and watch. There’s nothing you can do really.

Other than that, he’s doing super. He celebrated his 3rd birthday on Dec. 2 and enjoyed a nice raw beef marrow bone (as did Clank). Clank and the cats are doing well too.

BTW, I updated my php and mysql database  for the web site a few minutes ago and I had a minor freakout when I clicked on the photo gallery and it would NOT pull it up. All I got was an error message.  I got errors with this blog as well, but that didn’t concern me. But the gallery? With the thousands and thousands of images? Oh gosh, I almost cried.  Luckily it’s working again now.  Gawd..

Finally, I’ve discovered The Big Bang Theory since TBS has begun showing old episodes. Oh gosh I love that show.  I might be in love with Sheldon/Jim Parsons. lol.

We lowered Ratchet’s phenobarbital dose, as I mentioned in my previous entry. So far, so good with that (knock on wood). We did 2 weeks on 60mg (down from 120mg) and so far we’ve done 1 week on 30mg. Hopefully he continues to do well at that dose and remains seizure free.

I’m still running, as usual. I did a 7 miler yesterday morning and another one today. It’s a lot more fun to run now since it’s in the 60s (and occasionally 50s) in the morning instead of upper 80s. I love it. Sometimes it’s still hard to get myself out of bed to go (since it’s so early) but once I get out there, it’s awesome.

I’m also trying to eat healthier. Well..okay, the eating healthier isn’t working so good (as evident by the massive quanity of Oreos I ate last night) but I have given up diet soda for the time being and am drinking more water. I’m also avoiding caffeinated soda. I’ll allow myself 1 caffeine-free soda a day (or less) but that’s it.  So most of the time, it’s water.

See… I told you I had nothing to blog about. Dear, this is kind of pathetic …

The vet said that the phenobarbital levels were high. They were still within therapeutic levels (which is good), but they were on the high end of that and he doesn’t feel comfortable keeping him at that high of a concentration (nor do I). So, we are dropping his phenobarb dosage by a lot. He also had mild elevations of his liver and kidneys most likely from the phenobarb or the prednisone he has (and is) taking for his allergies.

So, with the drastic drop of the pheno, coupled with the fact that we are going to scale back his allergy medicine (some of which doesn’t seem to be really helping anyway, so he might as well not take it) we are hoping that does the trick and brings his levels back down to a more normal range. I’ll be happy to get him off so much of the medication  he’s on. That’s always been a bit of a concern for me.

I’m a little scared dropping the Phenobarbital down so low (even though I was hoping we could lower his dose) just because I’m afraid he’ll start having seizures again. But, as long as the seizures are not too frequent it should be okay. We just don’t want him having them as frequently as he did before the medicine. Either way, he can’t be getting his current dose if its going to cause high levels and affect his kidney/liver. That’s not good. And I completely trust our vet with this. He’s been Ratchet’s vet from the start.

So, we’ll lower him, redo bloodwork in a couple of months and see where we are at. The vet said if it seems like the phenobarb is doing more harm than good, we’ll take him off of it and switch him to an alternative medicine. He didn’t say what that would be, but I know Potassium Bromide is used along with a few other drugs.

As the vet told me in email (because I’m obsessive about this stuff and wanted to doublecheck what he had told my husband over the phone) these are all precautionary, proactive measures and he did not act or appear sick at his exam on Friday, so it’s not something to be super alarmed over.

But, of course, I worry, because Ratchet’s my “kid.” Ratchet, btw, is totally unconcerned. He just took him a speedy walk around the block and now he’s passed out on the couch. Love him!

So…we’ll see.

Edited 10/4:

Okay, so I made the mistake of reading Canine Epilepsy web sites last night which made me worry even more about the drastic drop in phenobarbital. Most of what I read mentioned gradually (rather than abruptly) lowering the dose because an abrupt change could cause seizures and also potentially severe seizures. They HAD to say severe.

So, I was worried. Hubby’s response was “quit reading stuff.” Men.

I broke down and emailed our vet who hopefully doesn’t think I’m an idiot. (He’s nice so I don’t think he does. Or, he hides it well. lol) I told him I trusted him completely on this, but since I had read that, I wanted to at least mention it in case it was something we needed to be concerned about. He got back to me this morning and said since we weren’t completely stopping it, he didn’t think we’d have any problems, BUT since this isn’t an emergency situation, we can be a little more conservative with it. So for the next two weeks I’ll give him 60mg (instead of his usual 120mg) and then after those two weeks I’ll drop him down to the 30mg we had originally planned on. So that makes me feel better. It’s still a substantial drop in dosage, but not as huge as it would have been initially.

This ranks up there with the time months and months ago that one of the guys (James Maslow) from Big Time Rush (tv show/singing group on Nickelodeon) started following me. Again, out of the blue before I started following him. I don’t think I ever mentioned BTR on my twitter, except for once when I said I had the theme song in my head. But I followed other Nick people so I guess… I don’t know.

Man v. Food’s Adam Richman is following me too. But that’s because he retweeted my reply to him once and then started following after that. That show always makes me hungry….

I guess they just like endless, boring tweets about running, my pets, the Golden Girls and the Braves, cause I sure don’t tweet anything interesting on there.

Why can’t Tom Glavine get on twitter? That’d be awesome. And then when he wouln’t follow me, I could tweet him and be like, “But dude, you have to follow me. Just ask Chuck Knoblauch!” lol. jk.

First she ran behind the couch. We almost got her, but she shot out and escaped in the bedroom under the bed. We spend several minutes with our heads stuck under the bed (Ratchet had his head under there looking too. Heh) trying to grab her, before she escaped back to the living room. I think it was at that point that we realized Nefarious had managed to flip himself (still in the carrier) off the couch and was laying in the middle of the living room. So I set his carrier right side up and Zoni fled off to the bedroom again.

At that point, we got smart and shut the door, then removed both the mattress and box springs from the bed frame. She basically ran in circles around the room before we FINALLY were able to grab her and shove her in the carrier. A good 15 minute ordeal.

And then they loudly meowed at us in the car to voice their extreme displeasure.

But luckily they were total angels at the vet. They just sat there (probably out of fear) and let them do whatever. And when Zoni was done I picked her up and she clung to me for dear life, so I guess she forgave me for the chase. (And I forgive her for slicing my hand with her razor claws … that have now been sufficiently trimmed)

Anyway, they both did great and got a clean bill of health. Always good to hear.

In running news, we did get our treadmill. I kind of suck at treadmill running. I’m getting better at it (at first I could only run 1 – 1.5 miles on it but my last run was 4 miles) but I just can’t run the distance I can outside. I think it’s a combination of boredom and just having no air flow. I mean, it’s cooler inside than out but I don’t have any wind to cool me off. I need a huge fan to put in front of it to cool me off I guess. But it’s cool to have that other option.

And, I bought myself new running shoes. I was previously running in the Nike Free (which I love) but I decided to try out a different brand/type so I bought some Brooks Ghost 4′s. I’ve only run in them once. I have to get used to them being so different from the Frees, but I think I will end up really liking them.

As for Clank, he had an excellent checkup. He behaved perfectly (aside from talkin’ a little trash to a huge Great Dane/Lab mix) and the vet said everything was great with him and we were doing everything right. Clank is having some issues with his anal glands (We get them expressed and then a few days/week later he’s back to scooting along the carpet) but other than that, he’s tip-top. The vet suggested maybe adding a little fiber (like Metamucil) or canned pumpkin to his food to see if that helped him out, so we’ll give that a try.

In other news, namely running news …. I did manage to increase my mileage each time out last week. I ran 4 days and did 3.1 miles, 4 miles, 5 miles and then 6.2 miles. Still well below my average, but better than the 8 total miles I ran the previous week. I went out again this morning and managed 7 (slow) miles. So I’m slowly getting back to my norm. I celebrated my 7 miler this morning by cooking myself a stack of pancakes. So basically, I burned a nice chunk of calories running and then turned right around and consumed them all (and more) in  a mound of carbs and butter and syrup. A delicious mound….

And, I’m excited because we purchased a treadmill! My husband wants to lose weight/get in shape, so I’m really glad we were able to find one that was doable so he can have it availabe to use. And I’ll use it some as well. (Though I’ve never used treadmill before, so hopefully I don’t face plant on it). I figure I can continue to run 4 days a week outside, but maybe add a 5th or 6th day of treadmill running, along with the occasionally elliptical workout as well.

Wow…if you had told me a couple of years ago I’d be doing all that exercising I would have thought you were nuts. Hey, it’s something to do…..

My sister is doing “ok.” Some days she’s okay and others she’s really sad. My heart hurts for her.

My sister lost the baby.

She was 7 months pregnant and she went in last Tuesday for a regular checkup. Her bloodcount was really low (close to needing a transfusion) so the doctor wanted her to get on iron pills and come back in a week. (She has ulcerative colitis which causes some bleeding) Since she had had a little bit of bleeding a few days before, he also wanted her to get an ultrasound and get checked out. They found a small tear in the placenta. But, everything else looked great.

They ended up having her go get a shot to help develop the baby’s lungs in case she went into pre-term labor. They also monitored the baby’s heartbeat for a couple of hours. The heartbeat was great for most of the time, but then it dropped and then it just wasn’t there anymore. The nurses kept trying to find it but couldn’t, and then the doctor came in and basically said, “We need to do an emergency c-section stat” and rushed her in the OR. My sister is okay, but they couldn’t save the baby.

My sister, mom, aunt and the baby’s father all got to hold him (they named him Nathan and said he looked perfect) and my sister got to keep the little cap, gown and booties he was dressed in. She also got his footprints and a certificate of existence for him. I guess the hospital took pictures as well that they will give them too. They decided to have him cremated and they picked up his ashes today.

It’s just a horrible, horrible situation. Sometimes my sister is okay and other times, she’s not. And, it’s going to be like that for quite awhile, I would imagine.

I got the news on Tuesday, booked a red eye flight and arrived there on Wednesday. I flew back home yesterday.  It was good to see everyone (hadn’t seen them since Nov. 2007) but not the circumstances any of us wanted.

What else can you say? It just sucks.

I was kind of proud of myself for flying solo. I haven’t flown since 2007 (with my husband) and haven’t flown by myself since way back in 1998. But I managed fine. I flew from Phoenix to Charlotte, then Charlotte to Florence, SC. My dad met me in Florence and drove the rest of the way to Myrtle Beach. I did the same thing coming back. I was so glad I flew into Charlotte instead of Atlanta. Atlanta’s airport always gets me so confused with the size of it and the train system, etc. I’ve missed a flight there before. Charlotte is much easier to navigate for me. I need mind-numbingly simple stuff or else I get turned all around and flustered. But I had an easy time navigating and no problem on flights, etc.

I haven’t run in a week (not that I care about that right now). I guess tomorrow morning I’ll try to get out and do a short, easy 3 mile run to get me back in the swing of things.