5C's Que Pasa

…Boom, boom, boom and repeat and repeat.

Someone at the North end of the beach is having a party.  We are only hearing the bass at about 10:30 PM….a long night may be in the works.  I saw many tents being set up just a tad North of us, looks like a large party tomorrow.  Life is always interesting on the Isla.

Carmeh is doing better day by day. She has finally started to drink water on her own.  I am having trouble finding Famotidine/Pepcid for her.  I found 40mg of Famotidina today but only 40mg which means I would have had to divide that pill in eight.  Pretty much impossible.  So I reached out to blog reader Patrick who is on his way here to the Isla.  He will arrive January 1st and will bring me a few months supply of the over counter drug I need for Carmeh.  Meanwhile when  my supply runs out in six days I have a neighbor who has some Pepcid that expired in 01/2011 that she gifted me that I can use.  It should still be good to a certain degree.

Thanks for sticking with me.  I have lots of sunset shots to share with you in the days to come.

Meanwhile…..boom, boom, boom…..

…….I saw a bird drop a finger size piece of french fry ( from one of the nearby restaurants ) in our yard.  This was about 3 days before Carmeh became ill.  Before I could get out out of my chair and pick it up Carmeh had run over and eaten it.  According to the vet we saw yesterday that would have been enough to set off her pancreatic reaction.  Just a tiny amount of fat and within a few days a full blown attack of the pancreas.

So the vet we saw yesterday poked and prodded her various gut areas and declared her to be pain free.  We are not out of the woods yet but Carmeh  is pain free and wanting to eat.  That is a major victory at this point.

We are giving her 5mg of Pepcid morning and evening which we hope is helping.  She is still only getting small amounts of food throughout the day.  I am trying everything I can think of to heal her for the long term and that takes a good deal of time.  It might be a few weeks before she is back to her normal diet.

I am also researching how to get more Pepcid.  We have no pharmacias here on the Isla so I have asked someone to check the pharmacies for me in Mazatlan.  Worst case I will have to find someone to bring some pills for us from the US.  I have enough for one more week.

We have still been giving Carmeh water via a syringe as she has not been drinking.  Tonight for the first time she went over to the water bowl and drank 😀   We will still give her more water before bed as she is a tad dehydrated.

Poco a poco ( bit by bit ) each day is better than the last.  We now have hope that she will recover from the bout of pancreatitis.

Thank you all for your get well wishes and positive thoughts.

Last Sunday, just a few days ago, we went to the Plazuela to meet Carol & Bill for dinner. The Plaza was decorated in it’s finest for Christmas.

Lots of vendors about, including this table of children painting precast ceramic ornaments. What a great idea!

I think we saw these last year.

Not only did we meet Carol & Bill but Lorie & Mike ( above ) who read my blog. What a surprise. They live in Prescott Arizona where many Canadians head for the winter but they come further south yet. A lovely couple. Hope to see more of them soon as they plan to visit us on the Isla.

I borrowed/stole this photo from Carol’s blog ( sorry I didn’t let you know ). This is Dawn and Mike, yes another Mike. They are from Drumheller, Alberta and Mike knew my Dad and worked with my Uncle Andy for over 25 years.  It was an emotional few moments for me.  This makes twice in the last month that I have meet people who knew my Dad.  Amazing.

Me, chatting with Carol and Bill. Did you know that Bill dances the tango and even competed in Argentina? Such a talented guy.  I am most impressed.

The reason we were all there was to listen to the talented Rafael Rodriguez who plays in the kiosk every Sunday from 7PM to 10PM. He certainly draws a crowd.

The view above our heads. The decorations are lovely as always but the lights are most impressive this season.

While Rafael took a break these fellows put on a top notch break dance routine.

This little guy with his puppy was memorized.

Just as I finished my meal I heard a soft angelic voice saying ‘hello Contessa’. Yes it was another blog reader, Rebecca, who was at the table behind us, which is a different restaurant, with her husband Steve and her parents who were visiting for the week. All very special people.  Rebbeca and Steve are from I think Wisconsin?? and have decided to move here for the winter and likely many future winters.  I had just heard about Rebecca last week, she is the new pastor at the Blue Church in Centro.  Yet another lovely surprise for me.  We plan to get together in January once the Christmas activities are over.

We stayed longer than planned and left just as Rafael was finished for the evening. He has offered both last year and this year again to share his stage with Colin but Colin says no. Meanwhile Rafael and his wife whose name I can’t remember wanted a photo with us. I would need to see the spelling to recall her name.  They also would like to come visit us here on the Isla.

It was a wonderful evening.  I am looking forward to reconnecting with all these special folks in the weeks to come.  We hope to get back to the Plazuela soon to listen to his music.

She is not in pain today.  She had two tablespoons of food this morning about an hour apart.  However she is not drinking so we continue to monitor her for dehydration and are syringing water as needed.

We asked if she wanted to walk the beach today and she did, almost our full two miles.  She was running and seemed very happy.

I gave her another bit of food which she gobbled up but then she had diarrhea again.

We can only hope that she is getting better but don’t know at this point.  Thank you for all of your suggestions, comments and emails.  One thing that we will not do is subject her to IV’s and leave her at the vet’s office.  Carmeh is very sensitive and easily stressed.  She has been through a lot over the past 18 months and we won’t subject her to another round of IV’s as we did in September.  This is not as severe an attack and we think we are on top of things.  Our goal is to keep her happy and comfortable which she is at the moment.

…Carmeh is not well and was in great pain this morning.  For some reason I have been calling her problem gastritis but it actually is pancreatitis.  I now have her on Tramadol for pain and need to get her on an anti inflammatory but I only have oral Metacam.  She needs food in her tummy to have oral Metacam but she can’t eat right now so I can’t give it to her.

Our vet back home in Kelowna is on call to us 24/7 at no charge.  Today she told me to try and get injectable Metacam or Onsior which can be given on an empty stomach.  So that had me calling two Mazatlan vets.  One had the Onsior but refused to sell it to me as in his opinion that is not what she needed.  He wanted us to bring her in for a few days of IV therapy first.  The other thinks he can get the injectable Metacam.  However his contact is away till tomorrow afternoon.  We have been on the phone back and forth with this last Mazatlan vet and our vet at home.  A very trying and unsettling day for all of us.

So we continue to fast her.  She was better later this afternoon and wanted food.  We will wait till the morning and after much deliberation have decided to give her one tablespoon of rice mixed with one tablespoon of her canned food.  However we will give her only one tablespoon of the mix and wait one hour.  Then we will give her the second tablespoon of the mix and then her oral dose of Metacam. Hopefully that food mix and timing will be enough to coat her stomach yet not irritate her gut.

This is a very difficult time for us.

We had a wonderful time with friends last evening and many outstanding moments.  That will be my next post.  Today is the celebration of the Virgin de Guadalupe and the blasts of noise as the locals celebrate are upsetting the girls.  This has been going on all weekend.  So we are wondering if there was an exceptional amount of these noise makers set off last evening which caused Carmeh stress which brought on the pancreatitis.

We have a long night ahead of us and can only hope that Carmeh will settle over the next week.  We really hope to have a few more months with her.

If anyone has any suggestions they are more than welcome.