A miracle?

As some of you know, K has had more than her share of health issues over the past 18 months that have resulted in a toe amputation and her being on antibiotics for at least half of the 18 months. I'm not complaining - I know that everything could have been far worse.

Despite all of the setbacks, K recovered from the toe amputation and has been my mountain biking buddy this year.

Her latest issue has been a series of urinary tract infections that have recurred many times since April, including a serious kidney infection. We thought that we'd put that whole ordeal behind us until a recent culture of the bacteria in her vagina showed MRSI, a very serious antibiotic-resistant staph infection.

Because the antibiotics that could fight this infection were also potentially toxic to K, the vet and I decided to do another culture, to be super-certain that K truly had MRSI before putting the evil antibiotics in her body. I found out yesterday that the culture results seem to hold some optimism but they're very confusing. The results showed that, as of 6 days ago, K still had a staph infection but the majority of bacteria in the culture were no longer resistant to standard antibiotics. This result is confusing because we did nothing to treat her in between cultures.

After the second sample of cells was taken, we started K on estrogen replacement therapy and on vaginal flushes with antibacterial medicine in them. Remember, however, that we started these things *after* the sample was taken... so they didn't cause the different results. And, yes, you read that correctly - "vaginal flushes". I have been trained by my vet on how to give my dog a douche. It's a trifle embarrassing... especially when a friend arrives at the door unannounced in the middle of the procedure (that actually happened)! Fortunately, rather than laughing at the absurdity of the situation, my friend jumped right in and distracted K with treats while I did my work.

After seeing the latest culture results, we consulted an internal medicine specialist who said to continue on this path and re-do the culture in a couple of weeks. Her hope was that K's body had rallied in between cultures and started killing the bacteria on its own. If she's right, we may avoid the dangerous antibiotics altogether.

I hate being in limbo land... I prefer to make a plan and stick with it. Instead, we're in "wait-and-see" mode. I guess that's better than having K be truly sick. She never has seemed like she had a whole-body illness so far in this episode.

Today, we mountain biked together, through our favorite aspen grove. Can you believe how different it looks from two weeks ago? It was like a golden heaven then.

It's hunting season here - that's why K is wearing a blaze orange vest.

So, I'm working on relaxing while we "wait and see". In the meantime, I promise that we'll be having lots of fun and enjoying sunrises/sunsets like the one that painted K's fur red in the photo below.

As an aside, when I searched the web for things related to "spontaneous recovery from MRSI", I hit a bunch of sites focused on miracles.