Elle Woods Wednesday

Those of you who have read for a while know that Elle has always been on the "small" side for a Great Dane.. She's never been a big eater, until she started on steroids last summer. Then she gained about 50 pounds, weighing in at an all-time high of 155 lbs last Christmas. Then she lost a little bit of it, then gained some more, etc.

Since her surgery, she's back down to a svelte 110 lbs, and back to picky eating habits.


To get her to eat since recovering from surgery, my mom has been feeding her really expensive canned foods.


Got this text from my mom last night:

Terrified

You know what's the most terrifying thought in the world?

The thought that you've already failed the bar exam (again), and your test is already graded, score sheet printed, with a big fat 'FAIL' on the top of it, and you're just skipping along through life, with no clue.

4ish weeks til bar results.

I could vomit.

Dumb.

Wedding was beautiful.

Southwest Airlines cancelled every flight on Sunday.

First available flight back to Chicago was for Thursday afternoon.

So I just paid 300 dollars to rent a car to drive back to Chicago.

Oh.
My.
God.

The best part? My friend Ray's fiancé ended up not making the trip, and his flight for today didn't get cancelled, but Southwest Airlines wouldn't let him change the name on the ticket to my name.

So he's driving back with me, because he's a good friend, and leaving two plane tickets.

Oh.
My.
God.

Go Away Irene!

I'm off to Kennebunkport, Maine, for the weekend for another wedding!

Fingers crossed that Irene stays away for Saturday's beach ceremony... although it's not looking so good!

Irene is not supposed to hit for real until Tuesday, although Saturday's forecast calls for rain.

And hope everyone on the east coast stays safe! Have a wonderful weekend!

Elle Woods Update

Elle is coming home!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Vet said her wound looks much better and her liver is not great yet, but it's healing!

Still no word on if she'll be able to return to Chicago, but I'm just happy she's out of the hospital after 8 days!

Here's a picture from my mom's visit to the sicky on Tuesday... poor baby!

Other random dog news...
I've also been dogsitting a sweet golden retriever for the past week... it's been so nice to have the company again! Can't wait til Elle gets back!

(don't tell Elle that PJ is on her bed.... she will be very jealous!)

New Life Goal

Yesterday I took the day off of work (yeah, I realize I need to update everyone on the job situation... next week!), so I could spend 8 hours waiting in line to sign the third grader I babysit for up for ice skating lessons.

Yes, you read that right.

Signup began at 5 PM, but you have to get there early in the morning to insure that you get a spot.
And a lot of the moms pay people to wait in line for them. So, I was paid to wait.

It was SUPER FUN!

Okay, so no it wasn't, but I got paid to wait and got paid to do work while I was there, so I'm not mad about it.


But I did come to one very important conclusion as I waited there for 8 hours -
New Life Goal: Wealthy enough to pay someone to stand in lines for me.

Elle Woods Wednesday

Thanks for all the sweet comments about Ellebaby.

A bit of good news - she appears to be doing better!
They are not sure if her liver is any better and won't know until tomorrow, but her wound is at least healing up and not gushing/oozing every time they unbandage it.

The vet said that they are feeling "cautiously optimistic"... So she's not out of the woods yet, but she's definitely better than she was!

Will report back tomorrow after we get liver test results.

Poor thing has now spent the last 7 days in the hospital, so
I'm really hoping she gets to go home soon!

New Workout Playlist!

Time for a post NOT about my poor sick pup....  in case you weren't already aware that I'm a crazy dog lady, I think the blog posts from the last few weeks have proven that to most definitely be the case.

Had to share this with you guys since I know a lot of you are always looking for updated workout playlists...

This is 70 minutes of  DJ DOLO's (one of my favorite Chicago DJ's) set last weekend... 

I love him and this playlist is awesome and definitely helped my last workout fly by!


Download here!

Elle

Elle is not doing very well.  They are going to try a new antibiotic and hope it helps, but it doesn't look good.

Being on the steroids for so long really screwed her liver up.

The vet said they could go back in and do more surgery, but it's just too much.

They're going to give the antibiotics 24-48 hours and see if there is any improvement.

:(

Elle Update

Elle is still in the hospital... it looks like she's not going to be able to come home today... but hopefully tomorrow!

First round of pathology reports came back... Elle's spleen weighed EIGHT POUNDS. That seemed big to me, so I did some googling and found the following information (for humans, not pups):

 A typical spleen weighs about six ounces when you are healthy. With some infections or other conditions, your spleen can become enlarged. When this happens, your spleen can balloon in weight to about four pounds.

Soooo yeah... eight pounds is a pretty damn big spleen!

Other good news - her platelets were WAY up today! (low platelets is what was causing all this mess to begin with). She originally was diagnosed with thrombocytopenia, which according to WebMd:
Thrombocytopenia (low platelet count): An enlarged spleen sometimes stores excessive numbers of the body’s platelets. Splenomegaly can result in abnormally few platelets circulating in the bloodstream where they belong.
So now that the spleen isn't harboring those platelets, she's back to normal!

So now we cross our fingers and hope that the liver biopsy results on Monday come back normal....

Post Surgery Update

Elle came through surgery okay. The vet said her spleen looked huge and gross so it was good that they removed it.

Unfortunately the vet said that her liver looked very bad too... They did a biopsy and sent it out, but results won't be back til Monday.  They found bacteria on it and said it looked like python skin, whatever the hell that means. So they're starting her on antibiotics, and we'll find out on Monday.


My mom did tell the vet that if it's something wrong with her liver that can't be cleared up by these antibiotics, this is the end of the road for Miss Elle. She's been through too much already.  Poor baby.

Thanks for all the tweets and emails of kind thoughts for Elle, I very much appreciate it! And will keep you all posted, of course.

Elle Woods Wednesday

It's been a big week in Dallas!
This past weekend my parents moved to their new house... Elle Woods and Satin have been very good helpers getting the new house ready to go.

Today is surgery day!
Thank goodness chemo was a success, her platelets are way up, and this morning Elle will be going under the knife to have her spleen removed.

(baby got a special bone to perk her up after chemo last week)

If all goes well with surgery she should spend the night tonight at the surgery center, then get moved to the vet's ICU for a night, and then hopefully be able to come home by Friday night.  

I am going home to Dallas Labor Day weekend for a friends wedding and hopefully if all goes according to plan I will be driving her back to Chicago after that weekend. 

Will keep you guys posted, hopefully this mess is all over soon!

Chicago From Space

Some of my new favorite accounts to follow on twitter are the astronauts who are currently in space... Ron Garan tweeted this picture of Chicago Sunday night/Monday morning... I love it!

Those of you on twitter - follow the #fromspace hashtag to see what the other astronauts are tweeting!

She's with the Nanny

Got a call from the mom of the kids I babysit for a couple days ago about some upcoming days to babysit the kids as they wind up their summer vacation.

She also asked how the bar exam went and we were chatting about random stuff (she's awesome and we get along really well), and she says:


Mom: Oh hey! I forgot to tell you! So I've been telling all my friends about how my babysitter thinks that Casey Anthony is innocent!

Me: Oh God, I'm sure they love that.

Mom: Yeah everyone's response is exactly the same - "So, your babysitter thinks Casey Anthony is innocent? ....  And you let her watch your kids?"

Vacay booked!

About a week before the bar exam (which feels like it was about 6 months ago, not 2 weeks ago), I texted my mom in the midst of a major meltdown.  I told my mom that I wasn't taking the test again because I just couldn't deal with failing again and if I failed again I would totally lose my shit and OMG THE WORLD IS ENDINGGGGGGGGGGG, etc.

So in order to bribe me (yes I'm 3 years old) to actually take the bar exam, my mom promised that we could go on vacation during results release... that way if I fail, it's fine... I'm on a beach. And maybe I'll just never come back?

SO today we finally booked a girls trip! My mom and I and some friends are going to be spending the first weekend in October in Playa del Carmen!

So I wil be checking bar exam results from here:

We will be staying in an all inclusive resort, which is my absolute favorite way to ... don't have to worry about bringing cash, don't have to worry about transportation, never leave the resort. Heaven.

And as my mom said:
"We'll plan on celebrating while we're there. And if it's not the news we're expecting, it's pretty cheap to live in Mexico if you can get past that whole poverty thing."

I might start brushing up on some Spanish... just in case.

Elle Woods Update

Thanks everyone for all your well wishes for my Ellebaby....

a quick update:

Her specialist ran a bunch of tests and decided that basically her only chance of survival is a splenectomy (having her spleen removed).
The good news is that he thinks that this should basically heal her and get her off of all of her awful steroids and get her back to normal so she can live out the rest of her life happily.
The bad news is that it's going to be super expensive, it's a major surgery, and of course there are no guarantees that it'll work.

Before the vet will do surgery, he wants to get her platelets up (this is basically her main issue... her blood doesn't clot right and her platelets are all messed up and the blood medicine has screwed with her liver)(very scientific explanation, of course), so she doesn't bleed out in the middle of surgery and die. To get platelets up they gave her more steroids... which didn't work. So yesterday she had a big dose of chemotherapy. (No she doesn't have cancer no I don't really understand why and how all this works, just trust me).

She will go back to the vet on Monday, and hopefully platelets will be up from chemo and surgery will be scheduled for the next day. Fingers crossed.

We got a 12 month payment plan... similar to the type of plan that Farrah on Teen Mom used to finance her boob job. So basically I am indebted to my parents for the rest of my life (even moreso than I already was) and any time that I want to buy something or go somewhere or eat something over the next year, I'll just pet my dog instead. Which means she needs to get healthy enough to come back to Chicago so that she's here for petting. Sigh.

Just ready to have a healthy pup back!

Go Ahead, Blame Me.

Scene: Thursday night, 11:30 PM, coming home from babysitting, in the elevator of my building

Me: ::::Yawn::::

Random Guy: "What do you do that you're just getting home?"

Me: "Well I work in a law office during the day but tonight I went straight to babysitting after work."

Random Guy: "Law office, huh? I hate lawyers. Just kidding! Some of my best friends are lawyers! I blame them all for Casey Anthony!"

Random Guy: [waiting for me to laugh]

Me: Death Stare


(Note: this story is not even slightly embellished)