Oliver Sails South: Happy New Year from Ft. Lauderdale

It is 2013 and we are enjoying the warm weather. Every few days we would get a north wind and it only gets into the 60s. What a change from last year. This week has been in the 70s and 80s.

We celebrated Christmas and New Year's Eve with Tom and Laura from Cool Hand. We potluck up by the marina offices so Oliver can participate. We were hoping to cross to the Bahamas together when weather cooperates with the winds and waves.

Our issue is Oliver. Just after Christmas he quit eating and had diarrhea. Sorry for that detail. We took him to one vet that said try bland food and give him the medicine we had with us from the vet back home. Well, another 2 days of this and we went to another vet, Dr. Birken. She recommended some new meds , did bloodwork and he rallied a touch, but not much. His kidney numbers were slightly higher and red blood count was a touch low. His liver, pancreas and other numbers looked good. We went back in 2 days since he was still not eating. Luckily he was drinking water. December 31, she kept him in the hospital with IVs and we did Barium x-rays. There may be a blockage at the beginning of the small intestine but that is not definitive, it could be food stuck. So no real answer. He was on a diet of chicken and rice and actually ate some New Years Eve. For the gas and inflammation we added Pepcid AC. Another day goes by, Dale and I still felt he needed an ultrasound to see what was going on, so Dr. Birken got us into Lauderdale Veterinarian Specialists. We waited for an hour to get in as other dogs seemed sicker. They finally took him back for his ultrasound and within 5 minutes the vet tech said to come back, that the vet needed to talk to us. He again had pericardial effusion, the heart sac filled with fluid and was compressing on his heart. This makes the heart not work very well as you can imagine. Without oxygen, organs start shutting down with the intestines going first as they are not as important as liver, spleen and such, So, they sedated him to drain it and and finished the ultrasound. This case of effusion was worse than the one a year and a half ago and his kidneys are worse. In fact his right kidney is almost nonexistent now. One kidney is not an issue if it works properly, but his left one is not. They still did not see a mass on his heart though. We brought him back to the boat at about 6:00 pm, very woozy and he slept in the cockpit until about 3:30 am. Dale and I put up the enclosure and I grabbed cushions and pillows and slept there with him. Getting a huge dog down skinny steps is tricky under the best of situations. This morning, January 3, Dale took him for a short walk and we got him to drink some water and eat a few pieces of his chicken and rice. He seems better, but he can fool even the experts. Everyone say some prayers for the guy and we will keep you posted. We plan to stay here to see how it goes. Bahamas will have to wait.

We are thinking positive. Before all this we had provisioned for the Bahamas. so we have enough food to last us forever.. We had plan to travel with Cool Hand, but do not want to hold them back. Many boats plan to leave this week. We will make travel plans after we know for sure how Oliver is doing. We go back to the specialist on Monday. Maybe the Keys are in our future