It's been a damn dodgy past week or so. It started out pretty badly--Random, my dog, threw up some pennies. This wouldn't be a hugely bad thing (she'd eaten pennies before. And no, I don't know why) but back in the '90s sometime the US Mint decided that all-copper pennies were too expensive to produce, so they went to copper-clad zinc.
Now, copper by itself is fine unless you happen to be a sheep (A penny or two is enough copper to kill a sheep. Dunno why--just one of those things) but zinc is terribly toxic. Two pennies is enough to kill your average child if they're left to run all the way through. The copper cladding is eaten away by the stomach acids, and then the zinc comes out. That tends to lead to hemolytic anemia and possibly pancreatitis, neither of which are at all good.
So, it was off to the vet as soon as we knew, and a $1200 vet bill (which is still growing) to find out that she'd eaten nearly a dollar's worth of change (including some nickels and dimes).
After that, Karen and I had a blowup over the weekend. Things have been teetering on the brink for a while, and we'd more or less set the beginning of June for the make it or break it decision. Well, I'd made the mistake of putting Trick on the NetFlix rental list. Never rent and watch romantic comedies when things are going less than well.
Monday actually turned out well. I went out for a walk in the evening, and met someone. We talked for hours, and it made a lot of things clearer. That was good.
Wednesday Karen and I talked a bunch, and we've mostly worked things out. No idea where it'll go, or if we'll work, but at least things will go somewhere.
Then yesterday... The vet called. Blood zinc levels of 16.4 (no, I don't know the units) for Random. This is not good. Normal's 2.5, toxic levels are 4.4, the last time she made it to 7.6 but was still OK after treatment.
Posted by Dan at May 31, 2002 07:31 PM