Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Twice More Without Feeling (and My Weekend at Shiloh's)

Shiloh waits for her family


I feel like this sometimes.

About a week and a half ago, I House/Dog/Lizard sat for Aaron's family. You've met Spiny before. This is Shiloh. She spent most of Friday and a good portion of the rest of the weekend just like this, looking out the window, presumably waiting for her family to come home.

Shiloh is a good little dog. She rarely barks, she won't chew on your shoes and she's housebroken. As long as she stays away from other dogs, she's very well behaved. Shiloh just wants to be loved. She greets just about everyone that comes into the house, hoping that they will pet her. Once she establishes that someone is a friend, she follows them all over the house.

Shiloh doesn't like to be alone for long periods of time, especially at night. So that's why I spent the night there. I felt bad because she stayed up late with me the first night. I didn't realize that she wouldn't go sleep in her doggy bed until I went to the bedroom with her. In fact, she wouldn't even walk into the bedroom unless I walked in first, (Fortunately, she napped on the couch while I was in the living room, so she got some sleep in.)


Shiloh


By the second day, she was spending less time looking through the window. But she really perked up when Katie and Aaron dropped by.


Shiloh


Katie knew where Shiloh's clothes were, so we played dress up. There are three different knit and crochet items in this picture. Mom made the light blue dog sweater that Shiloh is wearing. She engineered it herself based on a store-bought sweater Shiloh already had. Later, Mom told me that she saw a bunch of knitting patterns online for basically the same sweater. She reinvented the wheel with this one. I'm still impressed.

In the shoe box, there's a Shiloh-sized purple scarf that Aaron's Mom knit. And the blue thing just outside of the box is a little neckerchief that Katie crocheted.


Aaron and Shiloh


Shiloh makes me want to get a dog when I move to my next apartment. I could benefit from daily walks and waking up to a happy face and wagging tail. I've never been a dog person. When I was little I was terrified of them. I'm much better about dogs now that I'm older. Still, I don't know how I'd handle living with one. I'd need a dog as sweet and well behaved as Shiloh, and I suspect dogs like her are hard to find. 

Having fun with Shiloh was a nice distraction from all my pain problems. My procedure a couple of weeks ago went pretty well. The good news is that I'm confident that the Supraorbital Nerve is the problem. There was a very distinct heavy feeling where there is normally tingly pain.

The bad news is that it didn't last. Some tingling was back by the time I was in the car to go home. Two days later, it was back to normal, if not worse. Now it seems like my supraorbital nerve is back to its usual tingly state.

I finally had my follow up visit last week. We're doing this whole thing two more times, in hopes that the steroid will build up in the nerve. My next procedure is tomorrow. I'm up way too late blogging about this. It's hard to sleep, wondering how much relief I'll get and how long it will last. And I can't wait for more trigger point injections. Those worked really well on my back and shoulder for about a week and a half.

Through all this, I'll be staring out the window like Shiloh, waiting for a permanent solution.

At least I've met my deductible.

1 comment:

Chrissy said...

Shiloh is really cute, but I can see why she would need clothes, her coat isn't very thick. I could never have a dog, even if I were fit and well, as I couldn't commit to the walking, dog sitting, etc that owning a dog requires. I sometimes think they require as much looking after as a small child!

I just make do with regular fusses with my friend's gorgeous dog, Charlie. He is the friendliest beast, this side of the Atlantic!

So sorry the pain is back so quickly. But it is good news that they now know what the problem is and they will keep trying to fix it.

(by the way I used to be CraftyCripple in case you were wondering who I was LOL)