You're Getting to Be a Rabbit With Me

Let me give the briefing on Sunshine's health. Obviously, CW: pet health, but there's no particularly distressing news in here.

The story so far: In response to Sunshine's enlarged, arhythmic heart and sounds of fluid in the loungs we put her on several medicines. One of the oversize heart. One for the arhythmia. One diuretic, which should reduce the fluid in her lungs. Giving her these has been a problem only in that Sunshine loves loves loves loves loves LOVES LOVES LOVES the taste of them and will steal the syringe from our hands if we aren't fast enough. Or if the syringe runs out of medicine, which of course it will in time.

Still, I had thought it was having good effects. I thought she was being more energetic, even frisky, in the day. The drawback is that we had to take her off the pain medicine to control her arthritis. But we couldn't see much difference in her behavior off that.

Tuesday she got her first follow-up checkup. The main thing was blood tests, to see whether the diuretic was straining her kidney. That's outright happy news: no trouble there and there's no reason we can't keep her on that however long she needs. Also very good news: there's no sound of the arhythmia that first worried our bet. Her breathing sounds good too although I realize that hasn't explicitly said she's got no fluid left in her lungs.

Still, these are all happy developments. She's happy with her medicine and seems to be improving on it. The drawbacks are that she hasn't gained any weight back. With how she's been finishing her food faster, and eating more hay, I thought she might have put more muscle back on. And, well, she has heart disease. It's shortened her life and I suppose will continue to shorten it. Sunshine's approaching what we guess to be her seventh birthday and it's hard to imagine her being an old rabbit already.

Since she can't have the first choice of meloxicam --- combined with the diuretic it would put her kidneys at serious risk --- we found a second choice, gabapentin. She hasn't been on it long enough to say whether it's doing her any good. But she enjoys that too; it's got a grape flavor that's close to one of the other medicines she takes. It is building her evening care up into a bit of a ritual, but, we don't mind if we have to do this for another ten years.

On to some fresh pictures! Here's some snaps from a good-length walk I took down and around the zoo.

Here's a river --- not the Grand River --- crossed on the way to the zoo.

And here's the Potter Park Zoo dressed up for Halloween.

Turns out there's a Little Free Library outside the zoo, which is nice and which attracts animal books since, you know, you can get Chicken Soup For The ___ Soul at any Little Free Library.

This seems overly dramatic for the little building where they take your two bucks for the parking lot.

Uh, huh. I guess that's something to think about while doing a 5K race.

And there's the street entrance of the zoo, advertising the Fall Zootacular that we didn't get to.

Trivia: Among the favors Ludwig von Beethoven did to repay favors from Austrian ``Court Mechanician'' Johann Nepomuk Mälzel was endorsing the man's invention of an upright pendulum designed to tick at a preset tempo for musicians; Mälzel's metronome is still a used design. Source: Beethoven: The Universal Composer, Edmund Morris. (Mälzel had designed and built at least four ear trumpets for Beethoven.)

Currently Reading: Our Space Environment: Opportunities, Stakes, and Dangers, Editors Claude Nicollier, Volker Gass.

PS: Want to know What's Going On In Mary Worth? Why are GoComics and Comics Kingdom broken? September - November 2022 gets its recap today, at last.