last week....

the one in which Astro almost dies. AGAIN.

Some of my readers may remember last summer, when he went to a new and different vet to get "fixed", he had a bad reaction to the pre-op meds and almost didn't make it. Later that fall, he went back to our "old" vet who didn't use the same meds as the new and, was successfully neutered. He had all of his puppy shots with this vet and never had a problem. Until last Thursday.

He went in for yearly vaccinations. The other Pug, Scooby, went in with us (my two daughters go with me to help) for a dental vaccine booster shot. Astro was so calm and Scooby screamed like a lunatic, his usual routine.
We left the office.
We drove a few miles one way to pick something up. Astro is in front passenger seat with younger daughter, Scooby in back with oldest.
We head back home but then on a whim, stop by the bread store to get rolls and bread.
Girls and pugs wait in running car.
I came out and Astro is splayed out on K's lap, he's vomited and lost control of his bowels and is going into shock. K just thought he was overheated and was trying to clean up the mess, but I knew he'd never done that before, gotten carsick or overheated, so I call the vets office, they say bring him back. Thankfully the bread store is only about 4 minutes from the vet's office.
We race back.
They give him "life saving shot" through an IV.
We go home, we have dinner, including the pugs.
Astro begs, so things are looking pretty normal.....




You'd think.

After he eats, he usually cleans his face on the floor, nothing weird there. Until his head pops up and I'm noticing that his face is swelling up. Hmm...

It's closing time at the vets. Call them anyway.
"bring him back, we'll wait".

Stop in middle of dinner.

Rush back to the vet... (and why is it when you're in a hurry to get somewhere, and time is of the essence, that is when the train runs or you get behind a Sunday driver? Every. Single. Time?)

So, the other medicine they'd given him to prevent the hives wasn't working. Give more medicine. Vet says after initial assumption that he'd just had an unusual adverse reaction, she thinks it may have been a bad batch of vaccine, and as we're leaving, we notice other dog waiting with his owner, another bad reaction to vaccinations, so that makes sense.

Come home again. That's when Astro really loses it this time because although the swelling in his face has gone down, it's starting to spread out over his body...

After he raced around the house for about 20 minutes with me trying to calm him down, the medicine finally started kicking in and he started to calm down. He was so tired and stressed out....



this picture of his face is after most of the swelling had gone down, he had huge blisters on his eyelids at the vets office...



it was now moving through his body, he was swelling up in his private area as well as everywhere else and itching like crazy...


he was red all over and this is after he'd started to get better!


And to top it all off, most of us around here are sick with flu or viral infections, my mother in law is in hospital in E. Texas, and another stitcher's life was cut short too soon, so very sad about that...

Needless to say...no stitching to report. Astro is better...just too stressed out about the whole ordeal to blog about it himself. I could use a little peace around here myself...