Hi everyone. I'm sorry if this is a long, rambling story but I've kept so much bottled up the past day and a half that I just need to get it all out so I can calm down.. I'm about '' this close to just imploding.
So I finally buckled down and re-re-re-restarted sticking to a proper eating plan. I signed up for the gym last weekend, and ACTUALLY WENT the very next day! Small victory in itself, I'm *that* person all gyms love.. paying for 3 years and never using my membership..
I did really good the first week, went to the gym again on Wednesday, busted out my first BodyPump class (still hurting!) and even managed to research my way into a sub-300 calorie meal at Chevy's when we met some friends for dinner on Thursday night.
We got home around 11:30pm. DH spots an empty Orbit gum packet in front of our dog, Roxy's, bed - and makes a laughing remark that if she farts bubbles for the next few days, we know why. I'm
just slightly paranoid normally, and started fretting that the gum might block her intestine, or cause tummy problems, etc, so he hops online to check.
It all went downhill from there. Apparently even TWO pieces of sugar-free gum can cause a 40-50lb dog to have crazy insulin spikes, get sick, get liver damage, or worst case, have liver failure. Roxy is 20lbs and ate TWELVE pieces ... wrappers and all. She was her normal hyper, happy self though so I called the vet to ask what they thought.. and when the doctor heard "Xylitol", her entire voice changed and she just goes "You NEED to bring her in, RIGHT NOW."
So we FLY down to the emergency place and get there by 12:10am. The doctor's initial prognosis was crippling.. Roxy was considered a critical patient, most dogs who ingest that much Xylitol usually die, and she's just a little thing so they were shocked she was reacting so well thus far. We had no idea when she had eaten the gum (possible 15hr window) so they were just taking the possible worst case scenario into account - that she had just consumed it before we got home and would get her "crash" later. She was going to be hooked up on glucose IVs, supplemented with phosphorus and potassium, and needed liver protectorant to try to offset her liver failing from the, essentially, huge amount of poison she had eaten.
She has to remain there until Sunday night or Monday morning - it's been less than 24 hours and our bills already total over $2000.
I am tired, stressed out, DEPRESSED (i love that dog with my life), and so lost because I can't *do* anything... she could turn on a dime and go from being great to dying in 5 minutes if her liver decides it can't handle it
I don't even know how we're going to afford this - we were making really good progress paying down our debt and I was finally starting to feel like I could breathe and this is just going to cripple us
In spite of it all, I've managed to remain on plan.. my sleep is shot beyond all ****
, but I ate some oatmeal this morning, slept a few hours (kept waking up to call and see how she was doing because they told me to keep in touch since this is the critical period), had some crockpot chicken for lunch, and even forced myself to go to the gym this evening. Really, REALLY didn't want to do it but I figured it would be a good way to take my mind off things for a while... I tried my first Zumba class, too.
Turns out I have three left feet but hey, it was fun and I really needed the mental release for a while.
I'm just hoping and praying things will be okay. I don't usually get this scared about stuff but just this feeling of absolute helplessness is killing me. And I keep blaming myself, wondering if maybe we had come back home at 6pm like we usually do instead of meeting friends for dinner, perhaps we could have prevented this??? I don't know.
Ugh. But I'm proud I'm sticking to my plan at the very least.. I don't need to feel like crap on top of everything else for giving in to my emotions and stuffing my face full of cheesecake or the like.
Thank you for reading all this
Again, sorry it's so long but I didn't really have anyone else to turn to who would understand (my DH is about as torn-up about this as I am and I don't want to rehash it) and you guys are some of the most amazing support anyone could ask for.