The Straw That Broke The Camel's Back

Holy sh**. Just when I think that my life is calming down to a reasonably stressful environment, it gets sky rocketed back to unbearable, completely intolerable, 10/10 on the stress-o-meter bad. Kreat and I are supposed to go out of town tomorrow for a lovely, stress free weekend. I got up this morning, started on a bunch of homework that I needed to turn in this afternoon, ate breakfast with Kreat...everything was fine. Kreat went on his way to work.

I was playing with Lola and ruffled her head in my hands, like I do all the time. This time, Lola whips her head back, yelps in pain and tries to bite my hand. Now, for those of you who know Lola, she is not an aggressive dog; she has never, under any circumstance tried to bite a human, not even a kid. I knew something was wrong. I sat her down, wrapped my legs around her tightly, so that she couldn't wiggle out, and began examining her ears. Turns out, her right ear was so swollen on the inside that I could not look down into it. Her outer ear (the part that sticks up) was not inflammed, but the base of her head and the inside of her ear were huge, comparably. "Oh goody" I thought, "just what I need today."

I called our vet that has seen Lola for 4 years and I brought her right in. They called me about 30 minutes after I returned home from dropping her off and this is what the doctor says to me:

"Lola's right ear is encompassed in a hematoma (a collection of blood underneath the skin). Has she been scratching her head or ears a lot lately? [Yes, I reply] There appears to be a foreign body stuck in her ear, which has caused irritation and the subsequent itching of her head, and that itching has broken blood vessels, causing the hematoma. I will need to do surgery to drain the hematoma, cut out the damaged tissue and remove the foreign body. I'll call you when I'm finished."

Super. So $200 later, I bring my heavily sedated dog home from the vet with a viking horn bandage on her right ear. She hates this bandage; I went to pee, come out and the bandage is 2/3 of the way off - Lola is passed out on the couch. Screw this, she's getting an E-collar. Kreat's going to pick it up on his way home from work. In the mean time, Titan thinks that Lola's viking horn is a chew toy. If I leave the room for more than 1 minute, he is found chewing on it and trying to pull it off. He's not helping.

I don't know what I did to Karma in my life to deserve all of this crap, but whatever it was, I think I've paid my dues. Now, Lola has to go to the kennel tomorrow so that we can go out of town - which makes me a total anxiety stricken mess - but she has to wear the E-collar, which means I have to trust the staff at the kennel to keep it on her and they also have to administer her antibiotics three times a day. I don't have a whole lot of faith in people who's big ambition in life was to work at a bording kennel, so I'm guessing that I will return on Sunday to a dog with a massive infection, which will then turn septic and my dog will die. All because I tried to go on a nice weekend vacation with my husband.

The viking hat, poor Lola is so out of it:


On the lighter side, Titey thinks it's funny to sleep in our bed when he thinks no one is looking...