I’ve never experienced one before, but last week I’m pretty sure I started. I had these weird deep shakes that would start deep in my chest and radiate out to the rest of my body. I was having a little bit of trouble breathing.

On the spectrum of panic attacks (from an outsiders perspective on the matter), I would imagine it was still pretty mild but HOLY SHIT was it still awful. Sorry to all the people out there who experience those regularly.

Bear

Warning: this is A LOT of information and feel free to skip it if you have a short attention span lol.

Of course this was all relate to Bear’s health issue. But this week was a lot better than the previous week. The first vet visit was in Dallas when we were home visiting family and obviously was very scary. They recommended a cardiac vet specialist for more information but after speaking with them a couple days later they didn’t have availability until February. Waiting 6 months for more information on Bear’s health was NOT gonna work. Apparently they one of the few specialists in the nation so I’m sure they’re very good and we still made the appointment but we started looking for alternatives in the meantime.

We found a vet near us in Oklahoma that isn’t a cardiac specialist, but they have a lot of the same equipment and according to the vet herself “I can do basically everything they do, but they have more letters after their name” haha. I mean at the end of the day how can I argue with that. She said “I got lots of heart patients in the back right now I do this all the time”.

And they were FAST. They literally got us in the same day we called. They checked Bear and confirmed everything that he does have a murmur and that it was significant, but that doesn’t mean he’s in imminent danger, as they would need to do more testing to know more. So we dropped him off the very next morning to do a full work up to confirm everything.

The call we got was when I experienced a panic attack, but not from bad news. I think it was like a release of all the emotions I had been holding back. We actually got decent news.

They confirmed what they suspected, leaky heart valves and such, thinning of chamber walls. All the normal stuff that happens to pups his age. But his heart seems to be tolerating it well, there’s no fluid build up and his heart isn’t too enlarged, still within normal limits.

So basically what she said is “Of course we can’t know for sure, but I have seen many pups just like him, and I think we have years left before this becomes a major problem”

Even just typing that makes me tear up a bit right now. I collapsed and cried for like 10 minutes when I heard that. I love that dog so damn much and knowing I have more time with him was an unexplainable relief.

Because it’s not just keeping him around that’s important to me. I also want to make sure he’s happy and comfortable. I wouldn’t want to be pumping him full of medicines that make him feel bad and not happy just so he can be around a little bit longer.

But for now, he’s showing ZERO symptoms other than maybe a little more panting than normal (but that can just happen as dogs get older unrelated to heart failure). He still runs around and plays with toys and rolls on top of us at night to get our attention. I set up a doggie ramp near the bed and he still ignores it and jumps onto the bed.

So until things get worse, I’ve committed to being a better pup dad to him. I’m taking him on walks every day instead of just a couple times a week. I’m letting him go out to the backyard as much as he wants (which is like 30 times a day jesus christ haha, but I don’t let him stay longer than 5-10 min due to the heat), and Jessica and I are already planning more trips to dog parks and such so he can socialize. We are committed to making sure he’s even happier for however much longer he has.

The only medication the vet recommended is some blood pressure medication since his was in the moderately high range and she said it would be important to get that under control soon. Bear has not been complaining since he gets to start every day with a treat (with a little pill stuck inside lol).

We will be going back in a couple weeks to do a follow up and make sure his kidneys are handling the medication well.

Speaking of his kidneys we did find out a year back that he has crystals in his urine so he’s been on a special diet ever since. Well when they did the ultrasound for his heart they went ahead and checked his kidney and bladder and he has no stones! Which is amazing because apparently there are two types of crystals and he has the ones that are more difficult to manage. Finally the first bit of REALLY good news we got, since we really want to avoid surgery as much as possible with his heart condition.

They also did find some gingivitis on one of his teeth but we won’t be doing any cleanings since they would have to put him under and that’s not good with heart conditions. So the game plan is to just start brushing him daily to help get the infection under control, since most gingivitis is reversible with regular cleaning. Of course Bear is THRILLED to have his teeth brushed every night lol.

So yeah things are much better here. I still get nervous watching him and wondering if he’s breathing too fast and panting too much but I have to remind myself that Bear will let us know when he doesn’t feel good. They said he’ll stop meeting us at the door and stop running around, which isn’t even close to how he acts right now.

Jessica

This whole experience was a lot of us to deal with as well. We aren’t stupid we understand our dog is 11 years old which is towards the end of their life. But we couldn’t really talk about it much and would deflect by joking that he is a “brand new baby just born” lol.

But this was hard. We both cried a lot and held each other a lot. It really did bring us even closer together. We kind of put Bear on a pedestal in our relationship and didn’t really talk about us all as a family unit. So we’ve also committed to making sure we focus on all three of us instead of just him.

It may sound silly, but even small things help. Jessica has had this same photo of Bear on her phone background for YEARS. She changed it to a photo of all three of us. I think that’s a really good idea.

She and I are also making more of an effort to do more things together. I rearranged my office so we can fit another desk right next to me and now we’ve been playing games together. We used to sit in the living room and IF we did play games together, we would both play our own games separately (but still sitting on the couch together) which I don’t regret since it’s still quality time together, but it doesn’t compare to actually playing the same game and interacting. So we both bought a copy of Baldur’s Gate 3 and have been playing for hours every day and it’s been a blast!

Astigmatism

So I’ve been having this weird issue lately where my vision goes way blurry intermittently, but just in one eye. It’s like I’m seeing double, like a ghost image next to my normal vision. What’s weird is the main image is still super sharp due to my glasses. I’ll include an image below of what that looks like to me.

Yet some days it’s not noticeable at all. It just comes and goes as it pleases. I did a lot of research and it looked like it was something called “monocular diploplia” meaning “double vision in one eye”. Of course I try not to be that guy that self diagnoses myself, so I scheduled a visit with an eye doctor.

Yesterday I go in and explain everything to the doctor and he doesn’t seem to understand what I’m saying at first. I believe they thought I had normal double vision, where my eyes just aren’t quite lining up, which isn’t the problem. After some back and forth, he said “alright lets do some more measurements” so they send me to the back and put me on EVERY machine they had.

They didn’t find any issues with my retina or eye pressure or anything, but they did find something that was super weird.

I have a condition called “irregular astigmatism”. Normal astigmatism means the lens of your eye has a certain shape that looks like an hourglass. But mine has like peaks and valleys all over the place. It’s apparently really rare, especially for people my age, and usually only happens during trauma or surgery. He said “yeah I usually don’t even check for this on people like you so it’s not surprising no one caught this until now”. Apparently it gets worse with dry eyes since your tears aren’t filling the gaps as much which explains why it’s so intermittent.

There is a condition that’s degenerative that can cause this but he said it doesn’t look like I have that so that’s good news I guess!

I’m kind of attached to my glasses tho lol. Guess I’ll have to get used to wearing contacts again. I used to wear them daily back in my early 20s but after a couple years they started giving me severe light sensitivity so I swapped back to glasses.

Also btw since these contacts are custom made they’re like 600 bucks for one pair holy shit. I guess I’ll have to start making sure I have vision insurance in the future lol. Luckily they are designed to last a whole year so that’s good I guess.

I’m eager to try them out but I have this deep fear that maybe this was just a hail mary by the doctor and they still won’t fix my problem. Even right now my vision has gone super blurry in the middle of writing this and I may go lay down for a bit to try and get it back to normal.

I’ll report back with my findings!

Last updated September 02, 2023