Week 1 Treatment for Beacon

 

 

This photo was taken last Friday before we went to meet with the oncologist.  Beacon’s definitely feeling out of it.  He looks skinny here but it doesn’t really show just how easy it is to see his bones.  He has a shaved spot on the other side of his body as well from where our regular vet tried to remove fluid when he had his tooth pulled.  We keep calling these his windows!

Beacon had his official week 1 treatment for lymphoma this morning.  He did well and the vet told us that his swollen lymph nodes are at least half the size that they were this past Friday.  So he responded well to the IV meds he was given last week. 

He has lost about 10 pounds since all of this started!  He finally got his appetite back Sunday evening.  But it wasn’t until yesterday that he has been eating a full day’s worth of food.  We’re still giving him soft food (a combination of soaked regular food and canned) due to the tooth extraction.  We’ll be doing that likely through the weekend.  Because the soaked food puffs up so much I’ve been feeding him four times a day so that his stomach doesn’t get too full at one time.  Thankfully he has been interested in eating food, even after returning home from his treatment this morning.

His personaly is also pretty much back to normal.  He’ll hang out with us rather than going off on his own somewhere to rest.  He’ll bark if he sees some animal outside that he feels is invading his turf.  And he has gone back to chewing on Haven’s ears.  He must be feeling better! 

We’re still letting him rest and not doing anything that will tire him out too quickly.  I’ll probably start taking him for a walk down the driveway to get the mail.  And once he starts putting gaining the weight he lost we’ll work fetching back into the routine. 

We’re thankful that so far he’s responding to treatment and acting a lot more like himself.  He’s a trooper!

I’ve been working a bit on a new blog.  For some reason I feel like a fresh start is needed.  I’ll still continue to poke my head out here from time to time.  And I think this new blog where will be one where I’m not always trying to reply to comments left.  Sure, I  like comments (and I believe even “annonymous” people can comment so you don’t have to have an account to say something – although identifying yourself will help me!) but I’m sure I’ll be busy enough that writing posts will take time let alone feeling pressure to reply to comments.  Although knowing me I’ll still try and reply to them from time to time so show appreciation.  So we’ll see how my new blog (ad)venture goes.  I’ll be posting a link on Facebook when I’m ready for a reveal.  If we’re not friends on FB and you want a link when I share it let me know!

One about Beacon

The dogs celebrated their 8th birthday last week.  We’ve yet to really celebrate as Beacon has been sick.  In fact on his birthday last week (the 9th) we found out he has stage 5 lymphoma.  It has been a rough couple of weeks when it comes to the dogs.  In addition to finding out that Beacon has cancer he also had an infected tooth, which has been removed.  It was this tooth that actually led us to the cancer discovery as the two are not related.  Haven can tell that things aren’t right and we’ve been trying to do fun things with her. 

Beacon started treatment for his cancer this past Friday.  He’s already showing signs of feeling a bit better.  He’s skinny now (the photo above was taken earlier this year) from not eating well for the past two weeks.  He’s finally more interested in food and at least mentally seems to be journeying back to his old self. 

We will be doing weekly treatments at a specialist’s office for two months.  Then we’ll go every other week.  And as we go along we’ll continue to evaluate Beacon’s response to treatment and decide if we need to make any adjustments. 

For now we’re happy that he’s feeling better than he was a week ago.  He has been through a lot in the past week and a half. 

In non-dog news things are going well.  My computer has been acting up enough that we decided to get a replacement (of course it was ordered before all of the vet expenses we’ve paid so far and will be paying in the future!) which should be shipped out by the end of this week. 

We were finally able to select carpet for the nursery and hopefully that will be installed next week.  My due date is two weeks from today so we’re definitely cutting it close.  I keep wondering in what order the computer, carpet, and baby will arrive!!  

I need to take some updated nursery in progress photos and post them.  Hopefully I’ll get to that this week.  Otherwise we’re just getting stuff done around the house and waiting for the baby to decide it’s time to be born. 

A little over a week ago we had another ultrasound (the doctor likes to have one early, mid, and late in pregnancy).  I’m measuring two weeks ahead and the baby’s estimated weight is 7lbs 8oz!!!  Yikes!  I know that these calculations can be off and I’m hoping that the weight estimate is on the big side.  I haven’t gained weight in the past month and I actually lost a pound when I weighed in last week. 

I still don’t feel huge.  And I can still drive.   I’ve wondered all along if at some point I’d not be able to drive because my belly would get in the way and make it impossible for me to reach the pedals!  While I get tired faster I haven’t really had to limit my activity.  Although I haven’t done weeding and things that I know would wipe me out quickly.

Peeking Out

For some reason I felt like I should post here!!  I’m feeling like I’ll soon be in a calm before the storm phase.  Final nursery preparations are underway and soon I’ll be able to organize and set everything up.  Then I hope to have some down time before the baby arrives.  I  know that after he’s here life will be crazy.

A couple weeks ago Andrew and I met up with some friends of mine from college.  Three of the four of us (the forth is a guy anyway) are pregnant and due in June!!  Hopefully we’ll be able to get together sometime in the fall with our babies.  The other two already each have a boy and they’re both having girls. 

Also a couple of weeks ago we saw our niece again.  She had a good time laughing with (or at!) me.  Hopefully we’ll get to see her again soon.

The dogs are doing well.  Earlier this week we went on an hour long hike with them, which included a 15 minute fetching session at the river.  With all of the rain we’ve been having the rivers around here are high and running fast. 

I hope everyone has a good Memorial Day weekend!!

Lack of Posting

I seem to continually write that I mean to post more but never end up doing it.  I’ve been reading blogs here but not doing much posting.  Honestly I don’t have the time.  And sometimes I don’t have the motivation, especially since I’ve been trying to keep up with posting in multiple blogs. 

Unfortunately since WordPress is one of the newer places I’m blogging it tends to be the least up to date.  For now I will likely discontinue posting here.  In my mind I keep thinking that at some point I’ll have more time and motivation to post here but honestly I don’t know if and when that will happen.  Life will only get busier in my world! 

I’ll still leave this space open in the event that I want to ramble about something.  And I’ll still be reading and commenting on blogs here when I can.  :)

DITL 3.25.11

I took photos on Friday and finally got around to uploading them! At the end you’ll also find a few bonus photos from the weekend.

After waking up I look out into the backyard to make sure there aren’t any critters inside the fence before letting the dogs out.

While according to the calendar it’s spring it hasn’t felt like it here in Michigan.  One of the flood lights in the backyard is covered in frost.

But it’s sunny so that makes the cold temps not so bad.

As the sun came up along the Grand River you could also see fog.  The river is high due to all of the snow finally melting away – before it got cold again!   I decided to go out and take some morning photos.

The boat launch is completely under water.  This area floods each spring so locals are used to it.

Earlier in the week we had some freezing rain.  Since highs haven’t been above freezing the ice was still covering things.  This is a fence in a farm field.  It looks like I used a sepia setting but this is an unprocessed photo taken with no special settings.

This is one of many farms waking up to the rising sun.

And an icy fence along the side of the road.

This is what most of the country roads look like just outside of our city.  Lots of nice scenery and you never know what kind of animal life (wild, farm, and hobby) you’ll see.

More flooding along the Grand River.  This kind of reminds me of Dagobah.

After coming home and getting some stuff done I leave once again.  This time to run some errands.  Here I’m backing out of the garage.

Driving through downtown Lowell.

Once I’m out of town I take the back roads to my first destination.  Not much traffic at this time in the morning.

My first stop was a consignment sale.  I picked up a couple short sleeved maternity shirts for me and a couple of things for the baby.  I arrived about 20 minutes after the sale started and it was already pretty crowded.  Things were organized well though so it didn’t take too long for me to shop and check out.

I also stopped at Buy Buy Baby to pick up a stuffed sheep that makes various water noises.  I had a coupon and we saw this before and liked it.  I didn’t park in a spot for expectant mothers and parents with newborns though.  I don’t mind walking. 

In fact when I was in the store I asked someone a question and got an answer.  I wandered around a little more and the sales person came to find me with some more information.  She commented on how she turned around and I was gone, implying that I walk fast.  This is nice to hear since I’m always lagging behind when walking with Andrew.

My last stop was Target where I ended up getting Andrew’s birthday gifts.  And I ended up giving them to him yesterday – a week early! 

Although I was finished with my errands I decided to stop at a small park along the Thornapple River to walk around.

Cool bark on a tree.

Lots of water flowing through the dam.

This tree is sporting some icy roots.

I stopped at another park on the way home but couldn’t get around as much of it was flooded.  This looks like it’s part of a river but it’s usually a grassy field as far as you can see!

The price of gas continues to climb…

Up the hill and to our house.

Back home…at the end of the driveway.

For lunch I make waldorf salad.

While outside with the dogs once again I notice that the crocus are starting to come out.  Yay  for the first spring flowers.

And it’s back to getting stuff done around the house.  Another load of baby clothes.  Doing laudry doesn’t seem quite so bad when I can choose from different scents to use!

While waiting for the laundry to finish I play fetch with the dogs.  Well, mainly Beacon.

Haven’s in more of a “helping” mood rather than fetching on her own.  She likes to mess with Beacon as he fetches.

Haven also likes to “steal”.  I hold Beacon and throw the ball for Haven.  She goes and gets it.  Then she runs away waiting for Beacon to chase her.  But once he gets too close she drops the ball for him.

Eventually Beacon gets tired and takes a break.

Haven and I go back inside.  But Beacon likes to stay and continue to cool off and look around.  We call this his “man time”.

Andrew helped set up a booth for the Lowell Expo, which was the next day.  He got home late and brought Arby’s with him.  The spoiled dogs got their own junior roast beef to split!  Here they are in the “night night” position while the “balance” command is used so they’ll keep the meat on their snouts.

That ends my Friday in photos. But I have some extras from the weekend!

At the Lowell Expo there was a trailer that focused on safety information around electrical wires.  Here a hotdog is being used to represent a finger and what could happen if you touch a live wire.  Andrew took this photo as well as a video.

There was also a bear at  the expo.  I’m still not sure why though! And it was hard getting a photo because she kept wandering around.

A rare photo of me!   Andrew took this before we headed out for dinner with some friends.  I’m definitely looking more round.  And I figured that since I’m going to post a photo of Andrew below it’s only fair that I post one of me.

On Sunday we worked a bit more in the nursery.  I removed the crappy closet organizer and Andrew removed trim in the closet.  Then he went into the attic to fix a hole where critters have been getting in.  He had to crawl the length of the house to get to the hole too! 

Haven whined because she was confused about where he went.  Here she’s looking up at the hole where he disappeared.

Yesterday I ended up giving Andrew his birthday stuff – a week early.  If you’re a friend on Facebook you’ve already seen this photo.  I sent him on a scavenger hunt.  Along the way he found things that will prepare him for changing diapers because he has told me that he “doesn’t want to touch poop”.

We of course had to try the goggles and face mask on the dogs. This is Beacon.

And Haven.  Neither of them are thrilled with the experience but they’re both good sports.  See, we make them earn their Arby’s roast beef.

Life’s Happenings via Photos

I have been taking photos from time to time so I thought I’d post an update using them.

The snow is finally gone.  But before it all melted away the dogs continued to have fun in the backyard fetching and playing in it.

Haven stares at me.  She’s likely wanting to try something I’m eating or wants her breakfast.  I took this though because I thought her ears looked like she got a perm and is trying a little flip ‘do.

During one of our fetch sessions with the dogs Andrew’s toss of the bumper ended up behind him and on the roof of the screened in porch.  It required rescuing.

A couple weeks ago I took Beacon to one of his favorite river fetching spots.  We went out again the end of last week but I didn’t take the camera with me.

After a while he does start to get cold but if I were to keep throwing the bumper for him he’d keep fetching!

Once he starts shivering too much I make him stop fetching.  Here we’re looking for Andrew and Haven who are running on the trails and planned on meeting us.

A beaver has been busy here!

Remember that photo of the dining room table from my last post?  More things are accumulating!!!

We’ve been slowly working on the nursery.  This wall is our main slow down.  The previous owners totally messed up the drywall so we’ve been having to scrape wallpaper off it and will have to take some additional steps in preparing it for paint.  Thankfully it’s the only wall this way in the room.

Andrew and his brother had these cubes and used them when they were growing up.  They’re each 1×2.  We’ll be painting these to match the walls and using them as a dresser/changing table as well as for organization and storage in the closet in the nursery.

Life’s Happenings

Once again it has been quite some time since I’ve  posted here.   I have found that I’m more likely to post random tidbits about what’s happening on Facebook.  So if you’re not already a “friend” there and want to be let me know and I’ll tell you how to find me.

I thought I’d post some photos of what I’ve been up to lately, which really isn’t anything to cause great excitement for the masses.

Not too long ago we took the dogs out for a hike.  First was fetching in the river, mostly for Beacon.  This is why they both have on their float coats.  Andrew and Haven climbed on a fallen tree (and Beacon photobombs!).  You can also see a video here.

We say that Haven likes to mountain goat.  She’s not afraid of heights and climbing on things.  Beacon doesn’t like heights.  Sometimes Haven will look for an easy lift down when she’s up high (here about 5-6 feet off the ground).

I went to a sale that our local kids’ consignment shop was having last week.  I spent $30 and basically got all of this stuff for “free”.  If you spent more than $25 you got $5 off.  And you could fill a grocery bag with things from the clearance room for $5 so I like to look at the bag I was able to fill as being free.   :)  Pictured above are the free items I picked up.

We’ve decided to cloth diaper so I’ve been stocking up on all of the supplies.  It’s easy to get addicted to looking at (and buying) this stuff.  Thanks to Diaper Swappers I’ve been able to find some really great deals on diaper stuff and even some clothes.  I’m just about done with all things cloth diaper, which will get us from newborn to potty training!  Now if I can keep myself from looking for deals that I “just can’t pass up”…

This past Friday and Saturday I spent time making diaper stew.   All of the prefolds I purchased were new so they had to be prepped.  Rather than running them through the washing machine 3-5 times I decided to boil them for 30 minutes and do one time through the wash.  They all turned out well.  I may or may not do one more wash with detergent once I get that in.  I also have one dozen prefolds that were on back order coming so I’ll have to prep those and add them to the stack in a couple of weeks.

We still have snow on the ground.  The dogs still enjoy playing in it.  Getting to March 1 is always a mental goal of mine.  I feel like spring is right around the corner by then and whatever snow we do get from here on out shouldn’t last too long.

I’ve not read one book this year!  Well at least a fiction book.   I don’t think I’ll be reaching my goal of 25 books this year.  I do have a bunch of movie mini reviews to post on that blog of mine.  They’ve been piling up so much I’ll probably have to break them up into several posts.

That’s about it with me!  I’ve been horrible about reading and commenting in these parts and keep telling myself I’ll get better but so far it hasn’t happened!

Snowy!

We ended up with between 15 and 16 inches of snow here.  There are also some drifts that are close to 30 inches.  It took us five hours to clear the driveway and shovel the deck in the backyard!!  A local news station was calling this the Groundhog Day Dump, which made Andrew think that good old Phil had Taco Bell the night before.

Andrew took most of the photos as I was the one doing most of the snow blowing in the driveway.  When we moved to the backyard we had the dogs out there with us (for about an hour and a half).  We played with them for a bit before we shoveled the deck.

Andrew used his shovel handle to mark off various heights so he could measure the snow in various spots around the house.

It took double the time to clear the driveway.  There was so much snow that I had to go over everything twice!  At least toward the end the sun started coming out.  At this point Andrew’s finishing up a small part of the driveway while I take a break (and some photos).

I trudged through snow up to my knees or a little above to take a look at the back porch.  Once we were done with the front of the house it was time to tackle the deck.  And have the dogs come out to play!

There was a 22″ drift leading into the backyard from the carport.

The dogs had fun playing with Andrew in the snow.  He had our little camera, which is waterproof, and was also taking photos and video.  The dogs seemed to like using Andrew as a home base while playing.  They didn’t care if they were stepping or jumping on him.

Beacon’s intent look.  He’s waiting to see if Andrew has something for him to fetch.

Both dogs had to bunny hop through the snow because it was so deep.  We did end up walking around and making some trails so they could get around a little easier.

Haven was being clingy.  She thought that sitting on Andrew was a lot better than having her girlie bits in the deep snow.  Andrew took this self portrait.

If you look at this Flickr album you’ll see more photos that we took as well as some videos – two more in addition to the two below.

This is what happened when the dogs were playing and Andrew was taking a video.

I was also taking a video during some of this and here’s what I saw from my point of view!

Only a Month Into Winter?

With the east coast getting walloped with snow again this year I know I shouldn’t complain about our weather.  We’ve had snow but nothing measured in feet.  Although I think I’d rather a dumping of snow and then a period of calmness.  We’ve been getting a couple inches of snow every day or every other day.  It’s like the Groundhog Day movie!

We’ve had some periods of really cold weather.  The dogs don’t even like going outside.  After seeing this video I wonder if Beacon and Haven would like body sledding.  :)

And this is Haven!

A couple years ago while we were out hiking with the dogs Haven actually came back with a deer leg!  I wish I had the camera at the time.  It was hard not to laugh while telling her to drop it!  She looked so proud.

I know that every time I post here I say that I want to post more often and it doesn’t seem to happen.  I’ve even been slacking at replying to comments you’ve left!

I have some photos of birds that I’ve taken but haven’t uploaded yet.  Maybe sometime soon(ish!) I’ll do that and make another post.  I’ve even fallen behind in my thought that I’d post photos at least once a week!

Life’s Ramblings

I keep saying and thinking that I’ll post here more often.  So far this year that hasn’t happened.  We’ll see if I get better or worse as the year marches on.

Yesterday Andrew and I went with his parents to see Cirque du Soleil: Dralion.  It was awesome!  We had great seats.  Lots of fun acts.  The time we were there went so quickly!

 

We went out for a late lunch / early dinner afterward and then went to my MIL’s mom’s house for a bit.  Most of the time there we were looking at old photos.

When we got out of the car once we were back home we heard two or three owls calling back and forth to each other!  One was right over us!  We were able to shine a flashlight on him or her to get a better look.  We’re not sure what kind of owl we saw though.  It didn’t sound like the ones we usually hear and after listening to owl calls online we still couldn’t tell for sure.  No matter what kind it was cool to hear it so close and even be able to see it.

I’ve been stalking Lily the Black Bear lately.  I actually started a little over a year ago after reading about her in a blog.  I watched her give birth live last year!  And since then I’ve followed the saga of Lily and Hope over the summer.  Now the wait is on for Lily to give birth again.  Facebook has been a good way to find out if there’s anything happening on the cam worth seeing!

Friday night we finally watched Inception.  I’ve been waiting for my turn to come up in the library hold system.  We both really liked it.  I’m even thinking about writing a post just for this movie in my review blog where I’ll include spoilers.

A wintery mess is coming.  I’m hoping that we’ll be on the all snow side of this event but the weather people are showing us near the line between all snow and snow then freezing rain before turning to snow again.  We haven’t had any big storms yet this winter.  This week it seems like we’ll be getting a few inches every couple of days.  I’d rather get dumped on, dig out, and then have good roads again.

Finally, the end of last year I submitted three photos for an “Our Town” calendar done through our local paper.  One of my photos was selected!

It’s my banner for this blog and was taken the middle of July – used as one of my Project 365 photos.  Pretty cool!