If you follow me on Twitter, you know that not only do I have my two weeks of officer training school coming up, but you also know that I’ve been ill off and on for a while.

A week and a half ago (on Sunday), I thought I had come down with the ‘flu, even though I had both the seasonal and H1N1 ‘flu shots. I had severe headaches, muscle/joint pain and a low-grade fever. I was really fatigued and could barely stand.

By Tuesday, I had decided I was okay enough to go to work. I was feeling much better and figured that since I’d had the shots, I had avoided the worst of it. I took the morning off to make sure I was strong enough. I was feeling much better. I got ready for work and was blow-drying my hair when I almost passed out. So I decided not to go into work that day.

I made it into work on Wednesday and have been feeling okay on and off. I’ve been exhausted and extremely fatigued the entire time, but wasn’t feeling “sick.”  I even got up, went to the gym and did a 10 minute run on yesterday (Tuesday). Today, I started really feeling unbelievably exhausted.

Of course, the Navy hasn’t been making things easy with getting to my DCO school. My orders just came in this week and I can’t get DTS to work  (the Defense Travel System… I have orders, but can’t get travel itinerary so far). I needed my CAC reader to continue to work on it, so I decided to take afternoon off work.

However, I went to the mall to pick up the 1st anniversary present that I picked out for Huzzy (totally cool… have to take pictures and show you later!).  While driving in, I decided that I really needed to go to the doctor to see if there was anything that could be done. Surprisingly, my doctor had a 2:30 cancellation and they could get me in.

Anyway, to make a long story a bit shorter, the doctor listened to my symptoms (and they checked and I have a 99.2 degree fever and since my body temp runs a full degree lower than most, that’s like a 100.2) and voiced concerns that I might have one of a couple of viruses that are going around. Ones that mimic the ‘flu but instead can make your body stop producing blood and therefore make you anemic. And beyond that, they can also start causing liver and kidney failure.

So, yeah, he sent me on for blood tests and they should be back tomorrow morning. The whole “liver and kidney failure” thing scared the crap out of me. Now I’m questioning everything. Wait, is my pee a orange/brown color? Does that mean kidney problems? I really had more joint pain than muscle pain last week… does that mean it was this virus instead of the flu that generally produces muscle pain?

Oh, and to top it all off, I’m pretty sure a sinus infection is starting. So I’m on an antibiotic for that.

Ugh. So yeah. I’ve taken off work tomorrow. If the blood tests come back clear tomorrow, the doctor said I should start feeling better within 48 hours. He said if I feel better I can still go to DCO school on Sunday but if I wasn’t feeling better I needed to postpone it.

Problem is, my place of work pays my salary and allows me to get my Navy pay on top of it when I do Navy work. If I postpone the school until April (the next available) when I’m on unemployment, I will lose that salary that my employer pays. That’s upwards of $1000 that we’d lose. Not to mention the fact that since Huzzy will be deployed at the time, we’d have to pay for someone to watch three dogs. That would cost $300-$500.  Yeah, so we’d be losing out on a lot of money if I don’t go now.

So yeah, please think good thoughts that these blood tests come back negative for kidney and liver failure. Anemia isn’t that big of a deal but the other two… scare me.

Last week added to my list of “why I’m really not looking forward to being apart from Huzzy” reasons.

Wednesday night I came home from work and noticed that Huzzy was not yet home. He had taken our Little Brother (we are a Big Couple through Big Brothers/Big Sisters… if you don’t know about that organization, it’s well worth it to find out and to volunteer) fishing for one of the last times before our match ends when Huzzy leaves for Washington.

I walked into the house and immediate smelled it. It’s a smell that once you have experienced it, you’ll never forget. The smell that reminds me of my youth when the farmers around us–my uncle included–would stir their liquid manure pits. The moment I walked in the door, my first words were “oh, $hit.”  Literally.

I dropped everything in my arms to run and see which dog had had an accident and not knowing which I’d prefer to have an accident… one of the two easily-cleanable short-haired Greyhounds who are on not-so-easily cleanable white Berber carpeting or the hard-to-clean white long-haired Great Pyrenees who is in an easily-cleaned crate.

It was the latter. And the crate was filled with the liquid, putrid-smelling stuff.  And it was all over his rear and the bottoms of his feet.  Some if it had spilled out of the crate onto the aforementioned carpeting and some had gone up the walls a bit. Ugh!  I quickly opened the crate and took him outside where he immediately began retching and vomiting yellow bile.  And that the same time, more putrid stuff came from his other end. Great.  A geyser at both ends.

While he was outside doing that, I attempted to pull the crate into the family room where I could open windows and get some cross-ventilation in the house to try to air it out. I wanted to get it outside, but I also needed to watch the pup to see if the eruptions had ended.  They hadn’t. So I called Huzzy and asked him to come home and help.

I attempted to give the pup (well, he’s 14 1/2 months now and 106 pounds, so not quite a pup anymore) two Pepto Bismal pills. He managed to bite my hand very hard (the other two are relatively easy to pill, but he has automatic bite reactions to anything–hands included–going down his throat) three times. One pill made it down but the other pill was spit out on the ground.

By the time Huzzy got home, it had been 20 minutes since he’d had any spewing–I’m sure thanks to the Pepto–but I knew it was just a matter of time until the Pepto stopped working. And I didn’t want to give him much.  Huzzy had to check out of his recruiting command the next morning 2 1/2 hours away and I had to be at work early so neither of us had time to take Skah to the vet in the morning. Plus, as bad as he was, I was worried about him getting too dehydrated and getting even more ill.

So we made the decision to take him to the emergency vet (since the regular vet had closed already).

So off to the e-vet we went. I was pretty sure I knew what was wrong with him as both Chase and Lulu had gone through the same thing at the exact same time as one another two years ago. Basically, nothing is wrong but it’s some sort of stomach virus or doggie flu.

The e-vet costs $105 just to walk in the door and get checked out. Any tests, medications, etc are overly-priced extra. Of course, this vet wanted to do all the expensive tests first to make sure nothing was seriously wrong. When Chase and Lulu had what I swear is the same thing, my regular vet (because it happened during the day) said, “They are both young, so I doubt it’s anything serious… let’s just treat it as an infection and if it doesn’t help, then we’ll do the more expensive tests.”

When all his blood work came back negative they pretty much just said that we have a dog with severe nausea and diarrhea.  Duh. We knew that. However, they did give him sub-c fluids (fluids under the skin) to re-hydrate him, gave him a strong anti-nausea shot and sent us home with pills and instructions to get some 10mg Pepcid AC over the counter for him.

A photo of Skah on his first birthday (about 10 pounds lighter than he is now). This is how he's SUPPOSED to look... all white and fluffy cute.

$423 later, we walked out with the smelly not-so-white-anymore dog.  His time at the e-vet cost more than the Great Dane that was in there because the… uh… wrapper on his… uh… manliness… was stuck and had to be pulled back over under anesthesia.  Let’s say that while that dog looked really happy when he came in, I’m sure he was much happier once the procedure was over.  Yeah, our dog cost more than the much-larger dog who had to be sedated. Lovely.

But wait! The saga isn’t over yet!

Thursday night I was home alone with the pups because Huzzy was at his weekly pool league. Chase, the older Greyhound, started pacing and whining to be let out. So I did. Yup, another one with the Big D.  He got some Pepto because I wanted to try to stop the geyser before it started. And it was so easy thanks to the pill popper that I bought at the pet store (yay for my hands not being bitten anymore by the puppy!).

And as I was walking through the house, I smelled it. Yes, that smell again. And so I went in search of it. I found it in the bedroom next to a pair of Huzzy’s uniform shoes… which were splattered a bit in the process.  And when I saw it on the floor, I had to shake my head wryly… because it was only half there. The other half had been eaten.

Only one dog could have made that mess there and only one dog could have eaten it since one of my two poo-eaters was still confined to a crate in hopes that the illness wouldn’t spread to the other two.  Yup, Chase had deposited it and Lulu  had tried to help clean it up. Which meant that if she wasn’t already sick, Lulu was most likely about to get it.

It’s now been three days of chicken-and-rice feedings to the two sickos. As of this morning, they are both on regular food. Lulu–thank God–still hasn’t been sick and I don’t expect her to get it now.

Though I’ve done most of the cooking for the dogs and all of the pilling (my choice as I have more experience and Skah still is a pain to pill and does still try to bite), Huzzy was a huge help in cleanup. He was also the one to get up with the sick dogs the first couple of nights when they needed to go out several times a night.  Though I’ve done cleanup on my own before with two dogs, I can’t imagine trying to do it with three. And I hope that it never happens to me while Huzzy is deployed or while we are apart. But I’m sure that’s how it will happen.

Why? ‘Cause it’s the life of a Navy wife.

-Wifey