Medication Vacation

Hello, friends.

Many apologies for my blog inconsistency. Mumen came down with a case of “giant, mysterious lump on neck” and I’d been in a state of panic the last several weeks.

A pea-sized lump appeared two Tuesdays ago. Given that my last corgi, Cade, passed away from lymphoma (and the first sign was his lymph nodes swelling to the size of golf balls) my brain naturally exploded into a state of frenzied chaos. It didn’t help matters any that the lump had tripled in size the following morning.

I won’t bore you all with the intimate details. Let’s just say one FNA, one surgical exploration, two drain tubes, an e-collar, and dozens of antibiotics/prednisone/gabapentin pills later, we’re … not sure why his lump showed up. The vets think abscess, and there was certainly a lot of dead tissue and pus to back that up, but they still have no idea why the FNA came back with “no bacteria present” or what triggered it.

ANYWAY …

Here we are, two weeks later, and Mumen is feeling mostly 100% again. He still has some wicked holes in his neck from where his drain tubes were and has to wear the cone for several more days, but hallelujah, he’s showing signs of his old self.

During this predicament, Mumen had stopped using his button board. I don’t know if it was due to the lethargy, the pain, or the fact that he couldn’t quite hit the buttons accurately while trying to navigate a giant cone around his neck, but I really missed hearing his “voice”.

Let me tell you, that first button press was like a choir of angels singing, and now he’s asking to go outside every twenty minutes again.

With the panic subsiding, I can reflect more clearly on his relationship with his button board during the course of his illness. I did find it fascinating that, despite not using it for almost two weeks, he seems to have retained all the knowledge he held prior to his illness, and if anything seems even more eager to communicate now that he’s feeling better.

Something tells me he missed talking with me as much as I missed talking with him.

I’m looking forward to posting more insights regarding Mumen’s learning journey with his FluentPet board now that we’re back on track. As always, if you have any questions about your learner’s journey or if you’d like to pick our brain on what worked and didn’t work in our experience, I’m always more than willing to share. You can e-mail me, or you can always find us on TikTok and Instagram (@mumen.does.dog.stuff for either one).

Thanks and have a great holiday season!

Mumen with his e-collar, AKA Cone of Shame