My poor two boys

It's Friday and I'm exhausted after this week.

Buster

All week CP has been running errands and buying needed items for the house while he waits to start his new job on Monday. One of those errands was an appointment for Buster at the surgeon's office. Back in February I noticed that he was doing some weird walking and that he was having trouble going up stairs and jumping into our cars to go to daycare. We had xrays done and found out that he had partial tears of his ACLs in his hind legs.  Since then we have tried to keep him fairly quiet with no long walks and definitely no running with me. The rental house has been good though because it is a ranch so he hasn't needed to go up and down stairs and we ended up putting a lot of rugs down so that he had an easier time walking around and getting up from laying down.

About a month ago, I started to have to make him walk on the grass during our walks because he was dragging mainly his back right paw while walking. Sometimes he would come home from a walk bleeding from his nail because he had dragged it too much. He also started having a lot more trouble getting up from laying down (one or both of his back legs would slip on the floor and splay out to the side), he changed his stance for peeing, and one of his back legs often would get caught on the other leg like he didn't have control of it. We decided that this was not fair to Buster and even though he hadn't completely torn his ACL, he was likely in pain and needed to start the surgery.

We were all set to get Buster into the $4400 surgery (gah) Tuesday afternoon, when the surgeon called and said that Buster's liver test came back a little elevated. It could just be because he didn't eat that morning as it wasn't too off, but it could mean that he has some sort of kidney disease. But the surgeon also said that based on his appointment with Buster, he felt like we should see a neurologist to get Buster checked out for some sort of nerve disease or cancer of the spine. He said that it is improbable that two partially torn ACLs would cause all of the problems above and that he may not need the ACL surgery if he has a growth on his spine. After some debate because seeing a neurologist (especially if he has to have an MRI) is going to be expensive, we made the appointment for next week. 

Right now I am trying not to think about it too much because we don't have any answers. But everytime Buster scrapes his paw on the floor while walking or has trouble getting up from laying down, I wonder if it is because he is in pain from something on his spine. Or if he has cancer. We will hopefully have more answers next Friday, until then Buster is getting extra attention from me.

Wesley

Meanwhile, poor Wesley's first birthday is tomorrow. He came home from camping with a bunch of mosquito bites which at least one other parent at daycare was worried about (and remarked to a teacher). We kept joking about Wesley's chicken pox with the teachers during pickup/dropoff this week. Then CP got a call yesterday afternoon that his teacher noticed that he had a few more red bumps on his stomach that he didn't have earlier in the week. CP ran Wes over to the doctor (note: we currently are insurance-less until Monday) and it turns out that he has Hand Foot & Mouth disease. *face palm* I didn't put Wes to bed Wednesday night (CP did) and didn't see him in the morning as I had left for work at that point so I had no opportunity to see extra spots and CP doesn't remember seeing any either. I just feel so terrible that he has mouth sores and isn't going to be feeling great for his birthday. (Fingers crossed Izzy doesn't get it!)

Wes as I was putting him to bed last night

My poor two boys....