08:07 – Barbara returned mid-afternoon yesterday from the visit to one of the retirement facilities she and her sister had short-listed. The good news is that her parents loved the place and are excited about moving in. This is the facility that has one unit dedicated as guest/trial quarters. The actual unit her parents would be moving into isn’t ready for occupancy yet, so the facility manager suggested that her parents could move temporarily into the guest unit while the unit they’ll actually occupy is being cleaned up and painted. The monthly cost is a bit more than their monthly income, but VA will pay a portion of that cost and they do have savings and other assets, including their house, which will offset the difference. Barbara is going to talk to the VA Monday to find out exactly how much they’ll pay toward the monthly cost, but it looks doable. Now the trick is to get things rolling before Barbara’s parents have second thoughts or another medical emergency occurs.
While we were walking Colin last night, he stood and urinated for about a solid minute. Barbara commented about the strong smell of his urine and wondered if he had a urinary tract infection. He’s been acting a bit strangely for the last week or so, including having accidents (solid, not liquid) in the house. That’s one possible symptom of a UTI. UTIs in dogs can be very subtle, so I decided to start him on amoxicillin immediately. I gave him 1,000 mg as a loading dose last night. When he urinated this morning there was no strong odor, which suggests the amoxicillin has already knocked down the infection. We’ll give him 500 mg tid for the next few days, and then I’ll do a microscopic examination of his urine and an occult blood test. If that’s clear, we’ll assume the amoxicillin is working and continue it 500 mg bid for a couple more weeks. Then I’ll do a urine culture, just to make sure.
We’re making good progress on the first batch of 30 forensic science kits, and should be able to start shipping them by the end of the month.
15:47 – I decided to boost Colin to 750 mg tid. Years ago, I treated another of our dogs for some sort of infection. I followed the canine recommendations of the Merck Veterinary Manual, which IIRC were 5 to 7.5 mg/kg amoxicillin bid. The infection did not clear up, and when we took the dog to see Sue Stephens, our vet, she said that dosage was very low. So I looked elsewhere for the amoxicillin dosage for canine UTIs, and came up with a range of 10 to 25 mg/kg bid. For Colin, at about 32 kilos, that’d be 320 to 800 mg bid. So, although 500 mg is well within that range, I decided to go nearer the upper end. In fact, Colin tolerates a 1,000 mg dose without any problem, so I decided to go with 750 mg tid for the first couple of days and then 750 mg bid for the remainder of the two weeks or so.