A Little Panic For A Moment but We're Ready

This afternoon I was tying up alot of loose ends and taking more pictures of Carmella when I decided it might be educational to show on my blog what NDV looks like, so I opened my refrigerator and held it up to the light and took a picture of that and another of the dillutant that goes with it.

Everything was going smoothly when I got down to cropping and editing my pictures and when I came to that one as I cropped it and showed it to "fit on screen" I saw the magnified tiny lettering below the title and it said B1, not LaSota strain. I freaked out because this was why the procedure was rescheduled the first time, thinking that would not work, but this time it was too late.

I rushed around writing e-mails to Dr. Sears and Dr. Norwood in a panic asking if they knew whether this strain would do the same job or whether it would hurt her if it was not LaSota strain. Being around 6:30 pm Dr. Norwood was already gone and I figured I may or may not hear from Dr. Sears in time unless he checks his e-mail in the evening. I waited until around 9:00 pm and kept checking and since tomorrow when I got up would probably really be the crack of dawn for him I figured I better call him.

He answered the phone and I told him the predicament. Luckily he said it would still work and that as long as it did not have other viruses mixed with it there would be no risk of a reaction. I took a magnifyer and looked at the little bottle very carefully. There were no other names on it, so we should be OK.

Dr. Sears told me that we should not expect the fast kind of recovery that we saw in the body to take place in the CNS, and that for the kinds of symptoms due to demyelination that Carmella has we should not expect to see noticeable improvement for a minimum of 4-6 months. He said that's how long it takes for the regeneration of myelin and new pathways to be created via stem cells. This in and of itself is exciting because in documents written earlier he is conservative on the prospect of regeneration but focused more on the heading-off of further damage, although it is alluded to in certain paragraphs.

He asked me to stay in touch and I said I would. I was too nervous to stay on the phone for very long.

As an aside; it is uncanny that the theme of regeneration keeps showing up in my life.

Both Carmella and I have been nervous as hell this evening. Everytime I go into the kitchen she wants to chew on me. I tried getting her to eat as much as she could earlier because after 10:00 pm she is not supposed to eat anything and she can just have a little water. I need to take her outside on a leash tonight before I got to bed and in the morning because she will eat anything she can get off the ground, even sticks or dirt if I don't stop her.

Tonight I put together a folder with her medical records, the protocol procedure, and other related papers and took out all the stuff from it that would not be pertinent.

Watching the news coverage of the gas shortage I am still a little nervous about taking a taxi in the morning, as the forecast is that lines are shorter but many stations are still running out. I hope there are enough drivers working tomorrow so that they are not too backed up. I plan to call at 7:00 (two hours before we need to be there) just in case.

I also wish that a friend could sit with me while I'm waiting in the waitingroom to see how the surgery comes out. It feels alot like when my son was in the hospital being evaluated for brain surgery. I was pretty much handling it alone.

Well pretty soon the hard part will be over, the last shreds of the virus will be gone, and Carmella will be out of the woods. I'll be glad when she is home, safe and sound.

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Scheduling The Procedure

Yesterday was a mad rush. I got a call late in the day asking me to order the NDV myself and was given a link to the company a vet tech had located, but upon closer inspection it did not say in the description whether it was LaSota strain or another. (NDV comes in a whole variety of strains). We were shooting for tomorrow as the day for the procedure but when I went to the website I saw that they only ship 2-day service Mon-Wed. and it was already the end of the day, so it looked like it would really take a miracle to get ahold of the right stuff in time for an 8:20 am appointment tomorrow. Besides, the customer service line had already closed, so I had to wait until today to contact the hatchery supply house.

When I got up I called only to find that the strain was B-1, not LaSota, and that was all they had. They also didn't know where to get it, so I called Dr. Norwood's office to get his source, but he was tied up.

Then I put in a call to Dr. Muller at Briarcliff Animal Clinic. It took him a minute to realize who I was but then remembered and I told him that I was trying to get Dr. Norwood's source since we knew he was able to find it for the first part.

Dr. Muller told me also that he had a female vet friend whose husband was a researcher and owned a hatchery and that he could probably get it through them. I don't remember which part of Georgia their place was located but it sounded as though he thought we could get it before the end of next week.

We talked about possibly Wednesday and hoped to get it done before next Friday so that she wouldn't get any worse in the meantime.

He said he was excited about meeting me and Carmella, and was very nice.

Gwen, the Office Manager at Dr. Norwood's office called to get Dr. Muller's phone numbers and e-mail address because Dr. Norwood wanted to contact him with the information directly. I gave her the information, and asked if everything was OK because I hadn't heard from Dr. Norwood in ages. She said that he had just had an unusual number of surgeries and emergencies lately.

He'd had a meeting with some drug reps recently who specialized in vaccines and he presented Carmella's case to them. They were very impressed and urged him to publish his findings!

All this is great news but it also comes at a time when the one friend who is usually home that time of day can't be with me because she'll be out of town the entire week. Carmella and I will probably have to take a cab at least on the way over there, and I won't know if they'll be keeping her overnight until that afternoon when she wakes up from general anesthesia. I'm sure I will be nervous as hell on that day waiting to see how she is afterwards.

Tomorrow I am going to the first bead show I've been to in many months. I need to get some good accent beads to go with my new line.

The woman doing proofs for my custom stamps still hasn't gotten back to me with all of them but I hope to hear from her this week or on Monday so I can decide which ones I want made first and put in an order.

Carmella has been as rambunctious as ever, grabbing at my legs and chasing sticks in the back yard, but I can tell she knows something's up. She has started whining at the baby gate even when she doesn't have to go to the bathroom when I put her back in the kitchen so I can do my work.

If my bedroom door is open she runs and takes a flying leap onto my bed and wants to stay there but pretty soon she starts trying to chew on me and gets restless, then begins looking for trouble to get into on the floor and I have to put her back in the other room.

If the debate isn't cancelled between McCain and Obama tomorrow night I want to watch it. Current events in this country seem to have risen to a general state-of-emergency. Except for snippets of news here and there I've been so busy trying to get treatment for Carmella I have missed alot of what's going on lately.

This gas crisis reminds me of that movie "The Day After" with people operating on a basic survival level fighting over their place in line and arguing over who needs it the most.

Once this treatment is complete Carmella will probably start to calm down. The virus is most likely messing with her head and once the virus is gone she can really begin to start living instead of merely surviving.

If you'd like to help Carmella (God knows what this next part will add to the bill), you can purchase ad space here on my blog through Scratchback, use the donation button, and/or purchase handcrafted jewelry here:

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