Home, Sweet Home

Please accept our humblest apologies for not updating the past few days - it's been a whirlwind of activity.  A lot of folks have been worried, but the good news is that your 'Long and Short of it All' host 'Joey' is indeed home!  He came home on Wednesday afternoon to much fanfare.  While Dad's friend picked him up at the hospital, a lot of the hospital staff came out to the lobby to wish him a fond farewell.  Dad left work early to meet his friend at her house where Maggie was also staying for the week.  Joey was sure excited to see his Dachshund friends, and also his sister.  Maggie and Joey seemed a little indifferent at first, but it didn't take too long for them to lay down together and to clean each other's ears and faces.  Hope to get some photos of Joey and Maggie together soon.
Joey is still a pretty sick boy, and he's on a lot of medications.  He's on Plavix once a day for his blood clot in his lungs; amoxicillin as an antibiotic; metronidazole for diarrhea; a small dose of prednisone for life; ursodiol for his gallbladder sludge (3-4 months), and will be due for his DOCP injection in a few weeks (a shot for his Addison's disease, which he will get the rest of his life).  He also gets a hot pack to his jugular twice a day where his central catheter was.  All of his stitches have been removed.
The skinny boy is eating small amounts of canned food every 4 hours around the clock.  We take one tablespoon each of two different types of food and mix them together in little meatballs for him.   He seems hungry, and has an interest in food, but he chews the food slowly, spits a little out, and sometimes doesn't eat it all. 
He vomited the first evening he came home at about 7:30 PM, and again at 2:30 AM and 4:30 AM (Thursday morning).  We called the vet about this, and have withheld his amoxicillin and ursodiol because they make him nauseous.  We asked the vet if we could add Pepcid and some probiotics to his list of meds, and he agreed.  Joey didn't vomit yesterday morning and afternoon, but he did vomit again in the evening at 7 and 9 PM, and this was without receiving the amoxicillin and ursodiol.  He got some plain cooked chicken breast about 1 AM this morning, and has not been sick.  His stools are nicely formed.  He remains somewhat bright and alert even with the nausea.
It's a challenge to pill this boy now.  It has always been fairly easy to give him any pills in the past: stick it in a piece of cheese, and he gulps it down.  But now that he is chewing his food, he finds the pills and spits them out.  Even if you stick the pill in the back of his throat, he has developed this gag reflex where it instantly pops back out again before the hand you used to put it in his mouth even has time to close his snout and caress his throat.  The little devil!   We will be talking to the vet today to see about how we can put him back on the amoxicillin and ursodiol with his continuing nausea.
So that's where we are this morning.  And Joey hasn't been shrunken and turned into a cute wooden artifact, as seen in the photo above.  It's a gift from Honey, Teddy, and Chili!  Thanks!  It sure did brighten our day when we got it late last week.  Cool, right?  And thanks again so much for the comments and emails - they are a lot easier to read to Joey now that he is home.