When Life Gets in the Way

When life gets in the way is how I feel about a difficult period in our lives. In our case, a series of unexpected and unplanned for events that have meant a complete rethink and, in my case, a bit of a break from serious art work.

When Life Gets In The Way

The main preoccupation was our dog Barnie. When wrote my first blog about this, Barnie Blarney, Barnie had been taken to the vet for tests after collapsing at home following cage rest for a back injury.

Spondylitis

Well, the tests revealed that this was no straightforward back injury. Barnie had managed to ingest a grass seed that had passed through his intestinal wall and lodged in his spine causing a condition called ‘spondylitis’.  The x-ray looked horrendous as the infection has eaten away the bottom part of two of his vertebrae. We spent a lot of time researching this on the internet; one of the clearest explanations we found was at Pet Education where it says:

“Diskospondylitis (also spelled ‘discospondylitis’, and termed vertebral osteomyelitis’) is a bacterial or fungal infection of the vertebrae and the intervertebral discs in dogs. The resulting swelling, inflammation and bone deformities seen in diskospondylitis put pressure or compression on the spinal cord which runs through the vertebrae. The disease is termed “spondylitis” when only the vertebrae are involved. The disease should not be confused with ‘spondylosis,’ which is a non-infectious fusion or degeneration of the vertebrae.”

We agreed that the vet would admit Barnie and directly treat the infection as he was in a great deal of pain and needed intravenous pain relief.  We were told we were looking at two months of antibiotics and a long job to get him well but that he should hopefully respond to treatment. Certainly by Friday evening he was responding and things were looking good. Or so we thought…

Meningitis

On Saturday afternoon I telephoned to see how Barnie was doing and the vet said he had developed meningitis. Basically, the spondylitis infection had traveled to his brain and now things were even worse.

Meningitis (swelling of the meninges that cover the brain) is a very dangerous neurological disease – in Barnie’s case he was blind and basically a lump in the cage at the vets. Nothing prepared us for seeing him like that, completely unresponsive. Our first thought was to spare him any suffering and euthanize him but the vet said because he was unconscious he was not suffering and there was a chance that he might survive as he had been on antibiotics for several days already so we agreed to wait and see what happens.

After a few days there was an improvement in his condition though he was still very seriously ill. There were signs he was responding to treatment. We visited twice a day to help by giving him physical therapy, massage and moving his limbs etc. It was going to be a long job bringing him back but at only five years old he deserved the chance to get his life back. In the meantime, we continued with our day jobs and I mad time for my artwork where I could; that is all you can do when life gets in the way.

Update: Bad news. We all struggled for two weeks to try and get him through it. Barnet Boy and I went twice a day to do physical therapy and to try and get Barnie to eat. The vets did their medical thing. Unfortunately just when it looked like he might be recovering he started having seizures. These became continuous and uncontrollable and we had to have him put to sleep. He is buried in the garden, near my little dog Holly.

Before you go

My name is Dorothy Berry-Lound an artist and writer. You can find out more about my art and writing at https://dorothyberryloundart.com.

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Thank you for reading!