What Now?

Seffner, Florida

Guess where we are? 

Yep…Lazy Days.

Okay, here is what has been  happening.

First and most important we are having some major problems with little Squeaky.  She is home now and appears to be feeling better, but we’ve had a rough few days.

The vet we took her to last Friday was convinced most of her problems were due to a hairball that she had been unable to pass.    He felt even her “hypoglycemic event” could have been caused by the hairball.  I was hopeful this was indeed the cause of her problems.   He released her Saturday afternoon.  She was bright eyed and seemed much better.  As the day wore on she started looking worse and worse and we ended up having to take her back to the emergency animal clinic on Sunday afternoon.   We have now had some experience with the low blood sugar issues, and we are finally starting to recognize the symptoms.  Unfortunately, by the time I’m sure what the problem is, it’s almost too late.  When we got her to the ER,  she was starting to have  seizures and was really, really bad.  As soon as we walked in they recognized we had a major problem and came rushing out to get her, ignoring the other people that had arrived before us.  I quickly told them that I thought it was hypoglycemia and that she needed glucose fast.  To their credit, they started her on glucose immediately and she immediately improved.  Then they came out to get more of a history.  They kept her on a  IV glucose drip all night and monitored her blood sugar.  This is a great place.  They have overnight medical care, with doctors and a nursing staff.  It’s just like in a hospital, except I think you might get better care.  If you ever have a critically ill animal and the vet wants to keep them overnight, this is the kind of place they need to be.  I’m sure most major cities have some kind of animal ER.  They are expensive, but do a good job. In a vets office, the doctors  go home at 6 pm and the animal is left on their own all night.  At this place, there is a doctor on duty along with overnight nursing staff to watch the animals.  I read the charts and they actually checked on her many times overnight.

So Monday, we took her back to her vet.  He was off that day so we had two other doctors in the office looking at her.  Dr. Drake thinks the hairball was secondary to her real problem.  She is fairly certain she has lymphoma (cancer).  She did a needle aspirate of her spleen and its been sent to the lab for confirmation.  The good news is that it can be treated with Prednisone (steroid) and chemo drugs.  Evidently cats tolerate chemo drugs very well and it’s not too expensive (yeah right).  She would take a pill 2-3 times a week, so it’s something I could do. The vet was clear that this is a fatal disease and the best we could hope for is some time.  We certainly don’t want her to suffer though.  If this will help her to have some quality of life we’ll do it.  Of course we don’t have a definitive diagnosis yet.  We’ve come to accept the situation though, and we’ll deal with it.

She’s been home since Wednesday night, and so far we’ve managed to keep up the blood sugar.  I’m having to force feed her a little though, but she’s starting to eat on her own a little now.

Sooooooo….

 

The other news is that we are back at our “favorite” campsite….Camp Bayview at Lazy Days.

This is our view.

Beautiful sunset, huh?

We had some issues with the big living room slide-out. We had a guy named Johnnie Cook work on it.  He’s the slide out king, I guess.   He said after years of bouncing along, the slide just needed some adjustments.  He really knew what he was doing and the slide out is much quieter when we are putting it in and out. 

In the meantime, during the process of getting the slide out taken care of and having the toad brake installed, we just kept watching our refrigerator temperatures.  We had been having issues with it all along and Mike made several adjustments hoping that would fix the problem.  The problem with rv refrigerators is that since they don’t cool like a household frig, they have to give it 12 hours to test what they do.  The problem with ours was that after the 12 hours it would seem to be working fine for a few days and then we’d get a high temp again.  Finally last week-end we started having fairly consistent temps in the upper 40’s.  They scheduled us to come back to “Bayview”.   We weren’t able to get Mike this time and the guy we got, John, isn’t our favorite tech.  We will definitely try to not use him again.  Anyway, he had to go through the whole test and sit procedure before he could diagnose the problem.  We pitched a small fit and said we had the numbers written down and this has been done too many times.  It’s time to get it resolved.  Mike told him to pull the refrigerator out and check the box.  Some Norcold 1200 refrigerators had a problem with condensation getting between the box and the outside protective coating.  This caused delamination of the box and loss of cooling.  He finally got it removed on Thursday and after an approval from his boss, we got the okay for a brand new refrigerator!    Of course this meant another night in Bayview because they had to order it.  So it came about 2pm yesterday and he got it installed by 6pm. 

Here is a picture of the bad refrigerator.  Note the sides how they are bowed out?  That is the problem I mentioned.

Replacing a frig in a motor home is not quite like doing it in a house.  The first thing they have to do is take out a window! It’s too big to get through the door.   That involves removing the valance and day/night shades, which are all one piece (good to know for future reference).

Here is a picture from the inside with the window removed.

There were about 5 guys and a fork lift involved in this process.  It was interesting to watch.

Here is a photo of the old one being removed.

And the new one being brought in.

We had to stand outside during the process and we found this interesting moth on the side of the motor home.  It looked like he was made of wood.

Once they got the new refrigerator inside, it was hooked up pretty quickly and the window re-installed.  Of course we couldn’t leave…they have to wait 12 hours to make sure the temperature goes down to where it should be.  It’s currently 35.4 degrees, so we think all is good.  He has a few things to do on the outside unit today, but we’re hoping to finally leave Lazy Days today.   I know, I just jinxed it, right?

We can’t really complain I guess.  This refrigerator cost over $4000 and with tax and labor it would probably have cost us $5000.  John said our extended warranty would only have covered the cooling unit…not the box, so we are very lucky Lazy Days stepped up to the plate and replaced it for us.  I know they really didn’t want to, but they did once they were sure what the problem was. 

We’ve had a lot of wear and tear/maintenance items replaced and repaired on their dime.  Hopefully we got it all!   We have been frustrated, but now that we got the new frig, we are thankful it worked out like it did.  The new frig looks exactly like the old one and they were also able to use the beautiful cherry wood panels we had on the old one. 

And one more sunset picture from “Camp Bayview.”

Our “jello” plans to go to Vero Beach are postponed.  It’s almost time for Al to start on his pest control accounts, and with Squeaky’s health issues, we don’t want to go too far from “home.”  We will (hopefully) leave today and go to another campground…..NOT Lazy Days!

Wish us luck!