Happy Birthday, Grandpa!!

Today is Riley’s Grandpa’s birthday (my dad…you know, the bad photographer…)!!  He is 25!!  Oh, wait…that was FOREVER ago that he was 25…my bad!

We went out to dinner last night at my dad’s favorite Italian restaurant and tonight we’re having dessert (strawberry shortcake…Grandpa’s favorite) and presents.

Dad and his two girls.

Grandpa and his two furry girls!

Oh, and we DID end up having to drive 60 miles round trip over to Chesapeake to pick up Chloe’s ultrasound CD and X-ray CD.  They gave us three reasons why they couldn’t mail them…1. They might get lost in the mail.  2. They don’t have any bubble mailers.  And 3. They might get broken in the mail.  My dad got the name of the office manager there and is going to send her a letter.  My dad told the lady they talked to at the office that it was ridiculous that they didn’t have any bubble mailers because there is literally an Office Depot across the street from them.  We discussed how often things get lost in the mail and determined that it is not too often that something gets lost (in our experience at least) and if it did, they could just burn us another one and send it to us again.  Also, we get Netflix DVDs in the mail and they aren’t in bubble mailers and have never shown up to us broken.  Anyway, we have the CDs in our hot little hands and can now write a nasty letter!!  🙂

Scratch That…Chloe’s Surgery is Not Scheduled

We got a call from the vet last night and she said that she had discussed Chloe’s surgery with all the other doctors at the practice and they decided that they probably weren’t the best people to do the surgery.  They said they could do the spleen surgery, no problem, but if the polyp in her bladder ended up being anything other than that, they would have to send her to the surgeon.  So…they said that we should go to the surgeon’s office to have it done so that Chloe wouldn’t have to have two surgeries.

The surgeon is actually Riley’s surgeon (for her hips…I guess these people do it all!) and we have to take Chloe to (another) consultation next Thursday at 3:00.  Luckily, the surgeon is located the next city over from us and it is a 10 or 15 minute drive, so not bad.

My dad called to see if the specialist in Chesapeake that we saw last week could send the ultrasound and X-rays over to this new surgeon’s office.  The lady on the phone said that they could burn the ultrasound to a disc but that they couldn’t mail it…we would have to go pick it up.  What the crap??  Seriously, lady?  We had to drive like 45 minutes to get there.  And we paid them almost $450…so you honestly can’t throw it in an envelope and slap a stamp on it and send it!?  Outrageous.  Needless to say, we’re not happy and my dad is calling them back today to try to talk them into mailing it…so we’ll see.

Chloe on her usual perch…sleeping the day away.

Chloe’s Prognosis

Well, we got some hopeful news today at the veterinary internist/oncologist’s office.  They did a $350 ultrasound(!!!) and discovered that she has a polyp in her bladder which could be causing all of her infections and that her mass doesn’t look like the typical malignant spleen mass, so that’s promising.  They shaved her belly to get good contact while they were doing the ultrasound, so her belly reminds me of a little piglet’s belly!  🙂  I didn’t get a picture of it tonight though.

The specialist was going to send his notes and recommendations over to her regular vet.  She needs to have a chest X-ray to make sure the mass hasn’t spread to her lungs, and then she can have surgery to have the mass and spleen removed and while they’re doing that surgery she can have the polyp removed from her bladder.  We have to call the vet’s office sometime next week to see when we can schedule the X-ray and her surgery.

Here are some pictures we took:

The tunnel on the way over.

Driving by the Navy base.

In the waiting room.

Back in the exam room, waiting on the doctor.  Everyone had to tell us how good and sweet Chloe was.