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Oh, Billy. Leave it to you, at age 14+, being a city dog your entire life, to get Lyme disease.

So Billy has been having a tough time lately. Turns out a couple of weeks ago he had a lot of problems peeing, probably because of bladder stones (which we found out about due to a more recent drama). After that, he started favoring his back left leg pretty dramatically. But, as many of my readers may know, he is a major drama queen. On several other occasions we have rushed him to the vet or even the emergency room at Angell Medical Center, thinking there was something horrible wrong with him. Only to find that once there he exhibited no symptoms, or he magically repaired himself just in time to not have to go get x-rays for example.

Anyway, for maybe about 3 days leading up to last Monday, as I said, he was favoring his left back leg. Monday evening after taking him out, he was lying down inside and I suddenly took a look at that leg and noticed it was disgustingly swollen. Exhibit A:

It also felt like it was filled with fluid. It was swollen all the way up to his hip. We're pretty sure it wasn't swollen at all earlier in the day because we would have noticed.

So, we decided he definitely needed to go to the hospital. Our normal in-town free vet, Heather, was away at a conference in Colorado. So I called her boyfriend, the Bear, who has a car, and asked him to drive me and Billy to Angell Medical Center. He was out with Cleo, so he came over with her, and she stayed with Rob Reed while we went to the hospital.

Billy got a quick initial consult in the waiting room where they determined that yes, his leg was swollen and weird and also made a comment about lymph nodes being in that area. After waiting a little while we got in an exam room with a vet.

The vet took some history during which it was my job to convince her of all Billy's weird idiosyncrasies so she didn't decide any of them were symptoms. For instance, random moaning and growling meant almost nothing, it didn't mean he was in pain; the fact that he regularly walks on his knuckles on his back legs whenever he's feeling particularly lazy was probably not actually a neurological defect; the fact that for over a year he has refused to get himself up and down off his bed on his own and has instead been making us be his personal servants and pick him up when he wants to get up was not an example of anything more than ridiculous drama and laziness.

Anyway, she took his temp, checked his breathing and heart which I guess all were good. She then told me she wanted to do bloodwork and urinalysis to see what was going on. She couldn't really say until she got this back. She also would potentially want to do x-rays depending on the results of this labwork. But, apparently he would need "orthopedic" x-rays and would have to be sedated, which they don't do at night so we'd have to leave him overnight or bring him back the next day. If we didn't leave him she could give me some anti-inflammatories and send him home with an appointment for x-rays in the morning. All the lab work would be done there on site and ready the next day.

After many annoying and frustrating conversations on the phone with Rob and Heather I decided to bring him home with the drugs because he didn't seem to be in any particular pain, and because we were trying to minimize costs. I didn't think he needed an ICU nurse monitoring him overnight.

Before leaving she told me that his "initial" bloodwork looked good. I guess meaning nothing terrible was immediately showing up.

The Bear came back and picked us up and took us home, and took Cleo from our place back to his and Heather's place. I had at that point an appointment for Billy to get x-rays in the morning at 10am. After overnight and him not seeming any worse and not having most of the lab work back yet we decided to cancel the x-ray until we knew if it was necessary. Again, sorry Billy but we have in the past been tricked into spending unnecessary money on you and we weren't going to fall for it again!

Billy's doctor works evenings so I got a call from her later that night saying it looked like he had Lyme disease and that they'd run an additional test to confirm and in the meantime she'd put in a prescription for him of doxycycline for 3 weeks after which he should be fine. Wow, what a relief! She said dogs typically respond within 48 hours. Wouldn't you know, 48 hours into taking the drug his leg looked just about completely normal. Apparently the swelling was due to inflammation/infection related to the Lyme. I didn't know much about Lyme disease before this and still don't know a lot, but it's basically a bacteria so that makes sense. The doxycycline is an antibiotic.

So, all seems good so far. His leg has stayed normal looking and he seems none the worse for wear. Just a couple more weeks older!

Oh Billy. I'm certainly glad you're feeling better you crazy monster. I love you!