Money Pit Pip

While I was in the Keys, Brett was tending to Buddy and Bobo as well as our gals. We have noticed over the years that Grace gets feisty when she and Pippa are brought to play with Buddy. The last two times they hung out with Buddy they got into a fight so we figure Grace is jealous about having to share her boyfriend. I reminded Brett to only bring one girl at a time when visiting Buddy, but Brett is a brave wild man and chose to risk it. And it was fine for two days. On the third day, Grace's jealousy got the better of her and she bit Pippa while they were all playing on the dock. 

A tussle ensued. Locked in the brace of the other's jowls, Grace and Pippa tumbled off the dock and into the water. Brett watched as they tried to wrestle with no traction. He briefly considered letting Pippa drown Grace. "Enough of this," he thought to himself. Eventually, when he saw no end in sight, Brett emptied his pockets, took off his shoes, and jumped into the water to breakup the fight. 

I'll fast forward. Pippa's bite hole wouldn't stop bleeding. Though we've both looped around to being supporters of the Don Hon DIY School of Medicine, Brett took Pip to the animal hospital. Stubborn as her leaking wound was, they did a blood panel and found no platelets. Healthy pups have around 300,000 platelets at anytime. In her blood screening, they found 2. Without platelets your blood can't clot which is why Pip wouldn't stop bleeding. The doctors asked to keep Pip overnight so they could monitor things. So Brett went home to Grace, who had been locked in the bathroom for the 5 hours he was at the hospital, and found a huge hole in her neck that he could hear air passing through. He drove back out to the hospital with Grace. They patched her up, and Brett and Grace got home around 11:00pm. 

I'll fast forward again. Turns out Pippa has an autoimmune disease called ITP (Immune-Mediated Thrombocytopenia). Rare but not shocking, the doctors tell us. Her liver attacks her platelets leaving her without any when she needs them. When your platelet count gets too low your body can bleed and bruise internally for no reason. ITP can be caused by a cancer, which our vet has mostly ruled out, but they're still testing things. That is called secondary ITP. It can also be caused "spontaneously" and this is called primary ITP. That's what they think Pippi has. In learning about all of this, we now see evidence of it in the past, which makes us feel bad that Pips has been "sick" all this time. 

Anywho, she stayed in the hospital for three days and and came home with a huge swollen face, a fentanyl patch on her back, and countless drugs in her little body. We felt awful for her but watching her stagger around and face the wrong direction and cross her eyes really cracked us up. 

We had a tough two weeks there with constant pill administering and keeping the girls apart for own peace of mind. The wounds from the fight were minor. In fact, the one staple holding Grace's neck hole together fell out so Brett jammed it back in with a pair of pliers and Grace had almost no reaction. She's incredibly stoic. 
While I wanted to blame Brett for taking the girls to the dock, we probably wouldn't have found out about Pip's dern disease until things got really bad. We decided we both win. Or lose. 

Now, were almost four weeks in and both girls are healed up and off antibiotics. While Pip was on drugs she was especially cuddly and she followed me around all day and sat so that part of her was always touching part of me. I held warm compresses on her swollen face (the doctor told me to - I'm not insane) and she understood that I was caring for her. My heart felt like popcorn. 
But now, we've moved through the fog of pain medication and Pip has turned mean. At the moment, the vet and I are doing drug experiments to determine Pips average platelet count and how much medicine she needs daily to keep things stable. Yes, Pip will be on medication for the rest of her little life. She's our Money Pip. She is currently taking a medication that makes her extra hungry and extra grumpy. So now she's following me around begging for food all day and it is SO annoying. If I get up and walk anywhere, Pippa darts out from wherever she was sulking and she arrives at my feet within seconds. 

"I'm just going to the bathroom, " I'll tell her and then she lets out a grumpy huff and stomps off. I've caught her eating Grace's food three times this week. If we are eating, Pip is there. She presses her nose into our legs, whines, and licks the air around us. She grew accustomed to getting a snack every four hours during the foggy pill days because each of her six medications required food. That part is over now and she doesn't get it. 

My little cuddle puddle buddy is missing. The medication she's on now is one that notoriously makes people (and pets) irritable and sassy. And she is. She stays by herself most of the time and doesn't want to play with me like we usually do. We start tapering her off of this medication today so I'm hopeful that my fuzzy friend comes back.