Valentine's Day

Today was a real downer for Flower. The day started off fine. She vomited some last night, which I cleaned up this morning. Then, when I got home from work, I found where she had tracked some stool across my bed. I have several extra layers of blankets and sheets on my bed in anticipation of this, so it wasn't really a problem; I just take off the top 2 layers, replace them with clean, and put them in the wash. Today I decided that I should just go ahead and was all of my linens though. I moved Flower to the front window, where I also fed her her normal 6PM dinner. Ashley came over a little later on and we went to Petsmart to get a couple things for Flower (including some shampoo, since she was in dire need of a bath), then to Blockbuster to rent a movie, and finally to pick up a pizza at Round Table. I don't think we were home for 5 minutes with the pizza when Flower threw up. This was particularly bad, however, because she was lying in a blanket on a low table in the front window. I guess she must have tried to get up quickly and got caught because, when I heard her and turned around, she was on the floor, on her back, pinned between the bases of two tables, with the blanket covering most of her, and vomit all over her face and paws. I came as soon as I turned around; when I heard her I knew immediately that something was wrong, but I wasn't prepared to see her lying helpless and supine on the floor. I felt so badly for her, for how helpless she is right now. This is not the Flower I have come to know. I decided to go ahead and give her a bath right then so that I could clean the vomit off of her as well as clean her behind. This went better than the first time; I don't know if she was tired or if it was because I had Ashley's help. I used the bathtub this time also, instead of the sink. While I cleaned her backside, she moaned and cried; it must have hurt her badly, all of the feces that had built up in just about 48 hours. I continued to bath her and then rinse her off. I held her in a towel for several minutes to try to help dry her off. Since then she has been sleeping with very little effort to do anything else. She even remained unmoving through her midnight meal.

I figured that the vomiting of the past few days would pass as it had seemed to diminish in quantity with each subsequent episode, but tonight was significantly demoralizing. I just have to keep going though, I feel like she has been making progress and I can't stop here if that's the case. I need to maintain some degree of objectivity in assessing her progress in order to make the best choice for her.