A Day Like Yesterday
Posted 06-15-2010 at 09:33 AM by EmmyNoether
Yesterday was one of those days that causes you to just shake your head, throw up your hands and sigh as hard as you can. Okay, a little background: Sunday, the boyfriend and I took my dog for an extended walk in a local hiking-trail park. Like most owners of large dogs, we took off the leash when no one was around. For the first 2 miles of the hike, my dog was within 20 feet of us. Then, while we were distracted for 5 seconds, she took off into some direction after a squirrel. For 15 to 20 minutes she must have been hauling-ass, because when she finally came back to our calls, she flopped on the ground exhausted and couldn't even sit or stand back up. We did get her to follow us for the 2 miles back - on which we got lost. Luckily, there was a really nice older couple who took pity on us despite the fact that we were trespassing on their property. They drove us back to our car. We lifted my dog into their car, out of their car into mine, and from that point on, she took as few steps as possible. We did provide her plenty of water to drink and pour on top of her. She threw up 4 times and laid on a door mat for the rest of the night; we assumed it was heat exhaustion and over exertion.
So as if that's not sad enough, yesterday, I woke up at 5:00am and felt something stuck to my knee. I flipped on the light to find myself with a tick. I mentioned this fact to my boyfriend who looked at his legs and found 4 ticks on him - I had 8! We spent over an hour pulling ticks from our legs. I still had 3 heads inside of me after we were done. We saved them all for further examination and possible testing. We did try to go back to sleep, but by the time we finished it was practically time to wake up for the day. While he went to work, I went to an urgent care doctor. The doctor chiseled out the remaining heads with a scalpel and gave me doxycycline for mental health of not worrying about the statistical probability of getting diseases from 8 ticks. After waiting for 1.5 hours there, I went to the DMV because they never sent me my license through their automated system.
Everyone knows that going to the DMV is a fate worse than death. All I had to do was re-sign a slip of paper and get a photo taken... that's it, but they made me sit there waiting with a ticket for 1 hour. As I sat amiss the pain and itching of my tick bites I watched the 5 workers at the DMV chat with each other behind empty desks not helping anyone. One guy kept walking back and forth whispering jokes to the other while looking and smiling at all the people waiting. It was just offensive after a while. I know for a fact that they get paid to be there and the rest of us are losing money to be there. Is it their way of sticking it to people because of an inferiority complex? Finally, I got out of there, ran home and grabbed my dog to take her to the vet to just verify that it was indeed heat stroke.
I waited at the vet for 2 hours with an uncharacteristically sad and lethargic dog. This didn't stop her from rallying an attempt to rip the skin off the vets face when he went poking around where she didn't feel comfortable. Still, owners know when something is wrong with their dogs and something felt wrong. Nothing obvious in her stomach indicated that as a reason, and it seemed like blood work was the next option. I decided that instead of putting my PTSD dog through the horror of blood work, I would see if she improved throughout the night and return the next day if she hadn't. We finally got home, she took right back to her doormat, and laid there for mostly the rest of the day.
When the boyfriend got home, he decided to see if the person at the CVS minute-clinic would prescribe him doxycycline to make sure he did not get horrific tick-laden diseases. We go to the CVS I was told my prescriptions were sent to... they weren't there, and that CVS didn't have a minute-clinic either. We went to another CVS that did have a minute-clinic after trying to get an idea of how much those types of services would cost. We get there, wait for 30 minutes to see the person, who during a 20 minute conversation tells us that she's not allowed to prescribe doxycycline due to state law and fear of abuse. First of all, I've never known of any instance of an antibiotic addiction or habit... really? Secondly, instead of believing in preventative care, the state would rather risk someone getting a horrible disease than prescribing antibiotics. After his appointment, we waited for my prescriptions to fill, which took much longer than I feel sliding the right number of the right kind of pills into a canister should.
We went back to urgent care, and waited for another hour or so to get seen and out of there. Luckily for me, while I was there I noticed another head in me and the doctor (semi-illegally) got it out . We got the much-needed doxycycline and returned to yet another CVS. I didn't get home until 8:00pm after leaving shortly at 9:00am. Out of the 11 hours that all this took (ok, there were about 3 hours of down time in the middle), I felt like I had been waiting for 6 of them. Feeling frustrated, exhausted, and out of it, we got a pizza and crashed on the couch. The dog was perky enough to have some dinner and eat some pizza crusts.
I woke up at 4:30 this morning with incredible amount of itching all over my tick bite locations. This made it impossible to fall back asleep try as I might. I had a physical therapy appointment at 8:45 and by the time I returned home the dog looked more mopey than she did yesterday. Now, faced with an overwhelming amount of tiredness and wondering how I'll handle waiting for another vet, if need be, I'm weighing the pros and cons of a return visit. Like I said, Yesterday was just one of those days... and from experiencing what I have of today, this going to be just one of those weeks.
So as if that's not sad enough, yesterday, I woke up at 5:00am and felt something stuck to my knee. I flipped on the light to find myself with a tick. I mentioned this fact to my boyfriend who looked at his legs and found 4 ticks on him - I had 8! We spent over an hour pulling ticks from our legs. I still had 3 heads inside of me after we were done. We saved them all for further examination and possible testing. We did try to go back to sleep, but by the time we finished it was practically time to wake up for the day. While he went to work, I went to an urgent care doctor. The doctor chiseled out the remaining heads with a scalpel and gave me doxycycline for mental health of not worrying about the statistical probability of getting diseases from 8 ticks. After waiting for 1.5 hours there, I went to the DMV because they never sent me my license through their automated system.
Everyone knows that going to the DMV is a fate worse than death. All I had to do was re-sign a slip of paper and get a photo taken... that's it, but they made me sit there waiting with a ticket for 1 hour. As I sat amiss the pain and itching of my tick bites I watched the 5 workers at the DMV chat with each other behind empty desks not helping anyone. One guy kept walking back and forth whispering jokes to the other while looking and smiling at all the people waiting. It was just offensive after a while. I know for a fact that they get paid to be there and the rest of us are losing money to be there. Is it their way of sticking it to people because of an inferiority complex? Finally, I got out of there, ran home and grabbed my dog to take her to the vet to just verify that it was indeed heat stroke.
I waited at the vet for 2 hours with an uncharacteristically sad and lethargic dog. This didn't stop her from rallying an attempt to rip the skin off the vets face when he went poking around where she didn't feel comfortable. Still, owners know when something is wrong with their dogs and something felt wrong. Nothing obvious in her stomach indicated that as a reason, and it seemed like blood work was the next option. I decided that instead of putting my PTSD dog through the horror of blood work, I would see if she improved throughout the night and return the next day if she hadn't. We finally got home, she took right back to her doormat, and laid there for mostly the rest of the day.
When the boyfriend got home, he decided to see if the person at the CVS minute-clinic would prescribe him doxycycline to make sure he did not get horrific tick-laden diseases. We go to the CVS I was told my prescriptions were sent to... they weren't there, and that CVS didn't have a minute-clinic either. We went to another CVS that did have a minute-clinic after trying to get an idea of how much those types of services would cost. We get there, wait for 30 minutes to see the person, who during a 20 minute conversation tells us that she's not allowed to prescribe doxycycline due to state law and fear of abuse. First of all, I've never known of any instance of an antibiotic addiction or habit... really? Secondly, instead of believing in preventative care, the state would rather risk someone getting a horrible disease than prescribing antibiotics. After his appointment, we waited for my prescriptions to fill, which took much longer than I feel sliding the right number of the right kind of pills into a canister should.
We went back to urgent care, and waited for another hour or so to get seen and out of there. Luckily for me, while I was there I noticed another head in me and the doctor (semi-illegally) got it out . We got the much-needed doxycycline and returned to yet another CVS. I didn't get home until 8:00pm after leaving shortly at 9:00am. Out of the 11 hours that all this took (ok, there were about 3 hours of down time in the middle), I felt like I had been waiting for 6 of them. Feeling frustrated, exhausted, and out of it, we got a pizza and crashed on the couch. The dog was perky enough to have some dinner and eat some pizza crusts.
I woke up at 4:30 this morning with incredible amount of itching all over my tick bite locations. This made it impossible to fall back asleep try as I might. I had a physical therapy appointment at 8:45 and by the time I returned home the dog looked more mopey than she did yesterday. Now, faced with an overwhelming amount of tiredness and wondering how I'll handle waiting for another vet, if need be, I'm weighing the pros and cons of a return visit. Like I said, Yesterday was just one of those days... and from experiencing what I have of today, this going to be just one of those weeks.
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