Quigley Again

I'm really tired. Quigley has diarrhea again. It started Friday night. Saturday he wouldn't eat anything and was not quite his usual self. We went for a three mile walk though, and on it he passed stool that looked like chocolate syrup with a couple of lumps in it, and smelling strongly metallic (as in blood). I found that quite alarming. We came home and started him on a bland diet.

Sunday he seemed to be fine, except he was so hungry he was chewing everything, so it became a matter of do we want to put rice and chicken in him or have him put dirt, grass, sticks, the carpet, dustbunnies, you name it in himself? That night on the walk he only had two droppings and they were yellowish and pudding-y. Well, at least we were past the dark chocolate stuff.

We went home thinking he was on the road to recovery and I think I fed him a bit too much rice and chicken, because despite gobbling it down, about an hour after eating it, he threw it up. And the meal before that, I think, as well. Then he stood or lay around shivering, looking lost and out of it, and sometimes it seemed like he was going to sleep where he stood. It was past time for bed, and cold, so maybe that partially accounted for it.

Then at 3 am he woke me up to take him outside where he squirted the chocolate syrup stuff again. He did that two more times a half hour to an hour apart. In between I brought him in and he was all wired and wanting to eat. So I fed him, boiled more rice, mixed it with chicken. Fed him again.

By 8:45am the stool was yellow and puddingy again. So I've been feeding him small meals of rice and chicken anywhere from an hour to two and a half hours apart throughout the day. Also gave him a dose of Pepto Bismol according to Internet advice my hubby collected. We did that last time, too. It seems to help. Anyway, lots of cooking of rice, cleaning bowls and searching the backyard for watery things I hoped not to see there today. Thankfully, I didn't.

Tonight on his walk we had the yellow pudding again, some of it with blood, but none of the dark stuff.

Despite all that, and the fact that I'm running on about 4 hours of sleep, I stayed the course with my two hours of 100% concentration on writing, and have begun to patch together the new chapter 10.

Now, I have to go to bed. I hope.

~~~