It’s coming on to spring and pushing a month since I posted an update so here we go.

Chuck:
As many of you know we’ve spent most of the last 2 1/2 years working to get nutrition into Chuck. I took him for a cardiac ultrasound in early 2013 because my friend the exotics vet heard a heart murmur. We tickled one of the local cardiologists (a.k.a. one of our clinical professors from vet school days) greatly by having him do the ultrasound (he’d never done a snake before) and a heart based tumor and valve failure was diagnosed. The whole purpose of getting the diagnostics done was to decide whether or not there was anything medical that could be done to get the little stinker to eat. And for a while there was. The medication worked a treat for a while, then stopped working, then started working, then stopped working again. Which is where we were when I blew pureed cat food all over the kitchen ceiling a couple of months ago.
It finally got to the point where we couldn’t keep enough food going into Chuck to maintain his hydration, let alone his body weight, and he was getting very resistant to being handled. Not a way that I want one of my pets to live. So Andrew and I took Chuck up to see my friend the exotics vet and after some x-rays and some discussion we had him euthanized.
Chuck was our longest term pet. We’d had him for just a few months under 25 years and it’s a serious bummer to lose a family member after that long.
We’re looking for a stone cutter who can make a memorial stone for us and we plan to bury his ashes later on this spring.

Andrew’s Back:
For the last month Andrew has had to sleep in his recliner because otherwise his back starts to hurt and eventually he wakes up with shooting pains down his legs. He went to see the back specialist that did his second back surgery and diagnostics were done. After an entirely wasted trip to go and talk with a physician’s assistant whose white coat still had the original creases in it about the MRI, it was decided that Andrew will get at least one epidural cortisone injection. If it works, hooray. If it doesn’t, or if it only works for a little while, then they’re going to go in with a plumber’s snake and unclog his spinal cord again. Whee. 😕

Me:
I’ve spent the last six weeks trying to convince myself that it’s only February/March. The gorgeous weather has been frightfully tempting, but considering that I planted too early last year and ended up losing most of my crop of storage onions, I’m going to be completely conservative and not plant anything until after the first of April.
I also got asked to be a boards monitor on my veterinary subscription site (VIN) so I’ve been upgraded from blabbermouth member to low grade official which means basically nothing except that they pay for my yearly membership to the tune of $750 or so which is nice.

Other than that?
Working our butts off. Refereeing cats who have taken a passion for fighting with each other the little toe rags. Still LOVING the hardwood floors, and spending a lot of our down time watching Top Gear on BBC America and Bob’s Burgers.

We’re not very exciting people.