Getting back into the swing of things..

Well the first week of my vacation (but we call it "recovery" for my boss' sake..hehe) went great. Cliff and I hung out on his days off and the kids continued to go to daycare etc. I think we kept them home one day that week.

The second week..sucked the bag. Monday we kept the kids home because we were just not organized nor motivated enough to get our lazy butts out of bed. Tuesday I managed to convince Cliff (also known as bribing) to bring the kids to the daycare alone..it was the only day out of the 2 weeks off that he did it (so yes I basically guilted him into it oh and ofcourse bribed..). So he gets home and not a half hour later the teacher calls to say that Emma has lice and we have to pick her up and we might as well take Liam too so we can treat them both at the same time. All I can say is ICK!! I have been scratching my head ever since! So we trotted off to the Pharmaprix and picked up all the products. Oh and it was all rushed because I had an oil change appointment too boot.

That night after all the lice treatments were done, Boomer started to act strange. He was pacing back and forth and seemed to want to puke but nothing was happening. I called the vet at around 11:30 just to see what he thought..if it was something to be concerned about. He had been like that before and he normally just threw up and he was ok. He finally settled down at about 12:30 and I caught some z'sss while waiting for the vet to call. Well he did not call until 5:30 and I had never woken up before that to check on him. The vet asked me a few questions and told me to get him to the DMV in Montreal or to him ASAP that he most likely had bloat (gas in his stomach) and was in shock. So Cliff was working and I called him home (he had just walked in and was walking back out!) I called Dad and Shirley and had them comeover to watch the kids until Cliff came home. I took my Dad with me as well because we could barely get Boo in the car (Shirley and I) We got there and the Dr. told us to bring him in but we could barely get him out of the car. So the Dr (Dr. Bill) came and tried to pick him up with a towel around his stomach to keep him on his feet and have me coax him. It did not work so he just picked him up and whisked him in. Boomer had really deteriorated on the 25 minute drive.

Dr. Bill rushed him onto a table and he said we have no choice he is dying..and he stuck a needle (not attached to a syringe) right into his stomach and you could hear the air just coming out of his stomach. It was like deflating a balloon. Due to the fact he is a country vet he has no staff with emergencies so I had to hold on to the needle and press down! Then he got Dad to come in and hold another one!! The smell of the gas coming out was VILE. Once the air was out it was time to get him out of shock. At this point Shirley came and picked up Dad and I stayed on. He had to insert a tube down Boomer's throat to get more gas out and also to give him anti-gas stuff directly into his stomach. He seemed to be doing a little better but his temp was low. I spent the next few hours in wait and see mode - warming him up with a blow dryer (no incubators for 100 lb dogs) and taking his temp every 15 minutes. Dr. Bill wanted to do an X-ray to see if his stomach had twisted. But we did not get to that point because Boo started to bloat again. We did all the procedure again (needles and tube with anti-gas) but it did not work again. Within about 2 more hours he bloated again and at that point I told Dr. Bill that was it. I could not take him suffering like that anymore. We had "problems" with Boomer - he was not a bad dog but he was certainly not the dog for us. I swear he had the canine version of ADD..regardless I would never want to see any living thing go through that. It was terrible to see. Going with another vet I would not have seen most of it because they would have a staff to assist. I also was scared that it would happen again at home while I was at work and that was just terrible to even think about.

I stayed with him while Dr. Bill gave him the needle. I never thought that I could handle seeing that. I know I couldn't when we had Hogan put down (an equally crazy but epileptic dalmatian we had for a few months) but perhaps that is what growing up is all about. I felt I owed it to him to see him on his way. He is in a better place now and no longer suffering.

The rest of the week was still dealing with lice. Emma was able to go back to school on Friday and as far as we could see Liam never got them.. PHEW!

Friday night was lovely. We went out for a lovely dinner with Dad & Shirley. The rest of the weekend was quite relaxing.

Then it was back to work on Monday! I came back to 110 e-mails and 55 phone messages..lovely. I got back into the groove pretty quick.

On the surro front - well not much to say right now.. baby is doing well and so are the new Mommy and Daddy! Just enjoying parenting and all that comes with it!