I cannot exactly call today a good day, but it did have its redeeming parts.
At 2 o'clock this morning, I was awakened by Donner who was standing up and very nervous. I tried to get him to lie down in his bed but he refused to budge and kept looking over towards the side of the tent. Then I realized what the problem was. He had thrown up in three different places in the tent. I comforted him by telling him he was a good dog and let him come over to my mattress and lie down on it while I proceeded to clean up and it was not exactly easy, but it was not his fault. Of course I had no cleaning supplies in the tent so I had to go to the Defender to get what I needed to get the tent back in order. An hour later, everything was in order in the tent and I tried to go back to sleep but I couldn't. Since it was 3 o'clock by that time, and I knew that the Ambien that my doctor prescribed for these road trips last four hours, I decided to take one to guarantee a few more hours of sleep. Shortly after 6 o'clock I was awakened again by Donner who had thrown up two more times in the tent. Fortunately, I had the cleaning up materials in the tent and so I spent the next hour cleaning up after again.
The big problem though was not cleaning up, but it was clear that the Ambien still had not worn off and I was extremely groggy and unstable as I want about my chore.
The next hour or so I considered my options on what I had to do with respect to getting Donner well. These things do not cure themselves, I have learned. Since it was Saturday and since I had no idea at all where a vet was or if I could get an appointment, I considered packing up moving on and visiting vet somewhere on the path home, probably on Monday. I encountered this same problem four other times on my road trips. But Donner helped me make my decision by throwing up three more times outside and once in the Defender, and then coming down with a terrible case of diarrhea. I had to see a vet today, I concluded. The Grand Canyon was been here for a millions of years and surely will be here in one or two more.
I quickly closed up the tent, loaded Donner into the Defender, and headed out of the camp. Not knowing what the Donner's situation would be if and when I found out, I stopped off at the registration kiosk for the camp and made reservations for two more nights here. Unfortunately, the campsite I am in now is not available tomorrow, so whatever I do, I will have to empty out this campsite and then move into another one. Even if I were to get the campsite right next to me, which I know is being vacated tomorrow, I still have to take down my tent and vacate the site by 11 o'clock, and I can't move into that site until 12, even though the people there now have to leave by 11 o'clock. Rules are rules. But i lose two hours.
Despite Donner's infirmity, he was still anxious to meet the two dogs he knew were in the area, Charlie, the dog next-door, and another dog across from us. I could tell by his reaction to those dogs that he was really hurting. In fact, as I thought about his behavior in the last few days, I realize that he was showing signs of hurting for sometime. But I had no idea at all it was leading to this. I thought that he was just getting tired of the trip, but it was clearly because he was in pain.
Fortunately, when I made reservations for a campsite for two more nights, Eric, the staff member there, gave me the name of Canyon pet hospital in Falstaff, 90 miles distance, and recommended I take Donner there. The problem was that you had to have an appointment or wait until 5 o'clock until they saw their walk-in emergency patients. As soon as I had cell service just south of the park, I called the hospital and I was able to get a 2:40 PM appointment, which I had three hours to make, although I had to cover 90 miles on an uncertain road in those three hours.
On the way to the hospital, we stopped off at a very pleasant national forest area and took a break. It was clear that Donner was not even even able to hold down water as he threw that up to while we were there at that rest stop. The good news is that while we were there, a kindly gentleman named Albert Lopez drove by with his beautiful dog Daisy and we chatted, and that perked Donner up some but not for long. He was clearly hurting.
We arrived at the vet hospital about 1:30 and waited in the Defender for the hour before the appointment appointment. Inside, even when a beautiful dog named Snow teased him, he was not his same self.
If ever I met a vet who gave me the confidence that she knew what she was talking about and that she would cure my dog, I met that vet today in the person of Dr. Lisa at the hospital. After some blood tests and x-rays, Dr. Lisa came back with a pretty conclusive diagnosis, a ery serious bacterial infection that he probably picked up somewhere along the way, and gave me some options. Option One was to prescribe some medications and solutions that I could administer on the road and leave with the Donner today. But when she told me that if I wanted him well for the rest of the trip, he would have to be hospitalized for at least two maybe three days, and put on IVs since he was extremely dehydrated. Usually, Donner drinks about a gallon of water a day, but by 4 o'clock he probably only drank about two cups of water today.
I signed the papers to admit Donner to the hospital and made haste to get back on the road to the camp. It was 5 o'clock, and I knew that the sun goes down here at around 530, as it did last night at the Grand Canyon. Fortunately, I had saved on my GPS the location of my campsite and so I punched that into my GPS and got on the road, but not before sending an email message to some friends telling them where Donner was just in case something happened to me.
The first 30 minutes of the trip home, I mean, to the camp, were uneventful as it was on an interstate. But then, just as we were about to turn onto Route 64, a direct straight line path to the camp, the sun went down, disappearing over the mountains. What was about to take place has to be characterized as the worst drive of my life, and I've had some bad ones, as you already read on this blog several times. Route 64 for almost 60 miles is a straight shot. But it a narrow, unlighted, narrow–shouldered road running through animal-crossing territory. I purposely did not do the speed limit because I did not want to kill one animal in the process of trying to help my own. And It would not have been so bad as it became dark if the road was empty in the opposite direction. It was not. For the entire 60 miles, we encountered a steady stream of vehicles returning from the Grand Canyon, with very few interruptions along the way. The drive was horrific. Headlights of the oncoming cars, sometimes with their brights on, sometimes with only one headlight, and even in one case with no headlights produced what was probably the most risky drive I have taken in my life, and i have taken many The oncoming headlights were blinding, and at times I couldn't even see the white lines separating the two opposing lanes or where the shoulder was. For the entire trip, my eyes and attention were riveted on those white wines where they could be seen. Fortunately, there were not many cars going in my direction, and of the few cars that were behind me, only two dared to pass me. The others cooperated by staying behind me and when I finished the drive there were only two or three vehicles in line behind me. I did not dare take my eyes off the road once, not even to look at the speedometer, and those times that I did quickly look down i saw that every time I encountered one or a stream of vehicles coming in the opposite direction, to reduce the risks I reduced my speed from 50, which was less than the 60 mph limit there, to 35.
I made the 90 mile Drive in about 2 1/2 hour, Zbut it should've taken 90 minutes.
I arrived back at camp shortly before 8 PM and as soon as I pulled in to the site a friend i had emailed called me to tell me he had called the hospital and that they told him Donner was resting comfortably. It was comforting for me to know that.
The first thing that I did when I shut the engine off was to look for my competent 750 lumens surfire flashlight which I swear by. It was not where it was supposed to be, in the tray I have on my dashboard so that it is in reach all the time when I am in dark places, like I was then. It was not there. Then I remembered when I closed up the tent this morning I could not find it, but I assumed that it was in one of several places and that I would find it later. I couldn't find it. It was nowhere to be found. Of course, I carry a back pup flashlight, but it is one that I found several weeks before the trip started, and is a rather quirky one. It's one that I have seen advertised on TV where if you call in within so many minutes they will send you not one but two of these flashlights. The Flashlight appeared to be very powerful but in fact they are pieces of junk.This is why you get two for the price of one. The flashlights are so bad that they do not even put the name of the flashlight on it. Fortunately, I had two headlamps and my powerful vehicle battery starter, and so I pulled them out and proceeded to unload the Defender and set up the camp for the night. By the way, this is not the only surefire flashlight that has gone missing on me. I usually take two all my trips, but over the last two years two of them have gone missing from my home. I usually lose nothing, and it is ironic that did I lose those two at home, and more ironic that I might have lost this one. Since I used it last night when I had to clean up, and since I was so tired and groggy I probably put it somewhere where it didn't belong, and so it may show up eventually, unless i threw it out with the trash.
Donner will clearly not be home tomorrow and so I probably will not drive down there to visit him, more for not wanting to interrupt his recovery than not wanting to make the 180-mile trip myself. I will probably spend the day doing all that I want to see here at the Grand Canyon and preparing for going to visit Donner on Monday and our trip home. When I do go there, if he is ready to be released, if it is late in the day, I will stay in a motel with him there. Same thing for Tuesday. But I do intend to return to the Grand Canyon because I want to get a picture of Donner in front of it, which I do not have now. I will probably have to drive this route to get home anyway, so I will not be going out of my way. After that, we will make haste to get home. Since the trip after Denver is really quite boring, and since many campgrounds are closing, and even if they are open they are not as interesting as the camps west of Denver and north of the US border, in order to get home quickly, I will probably stay in motels along the way so that I can save two hours a day and get home at least one day earlier than if I were to camp the whole way. Regardless, it is time to bring this trip to an end for Donner' sake.
I have taken nine road trips over the last 18 years and probably spent close to 365 days in my tent with my dogs. This is the first time that I have been in the tent without them. I know Donner is in good hands in the hospital, but I still miss him greatly.
In retrospect, I have no regrets about taking this excursion to the Grand Canyon. Assuming that the bug that Donner picked up occurred a few days back on the journey, perhaps at Donner Lake when he drank some of the water in the lake, this infirmity of his would have hit him somewhere else on the journey home and I might have decided just to drive on quickly and get him treated at home. Had I done that, his health would have been in serious jeopardy. Once, I lucked out on a decision, but did not luck out on Donner's coming down with this terrible bug.
I also lucked out by renewing automatically Donner's health insurance. Fortunately, I have a $1000 deductible so all expenses over $1000 will be covered by insurance. Of course, even if I had no insurance, it would have made no difference to me what it cost as that fantastic dog is priority for me. More than a priority, he is part of me. And i know one thing now for sure - it is going to be very lonely in this tent and in the Defender for the next three days without my beloved companion, even for a guy who likes solitude, but that solitude has to be accompanied by my dogs. But right now, i am not worried about myself, but Donner's health. Fortunstely, he is in the best possible hands i can imagine. Dr. Lisa's obvious competence blew me away as much as the sight of the Grand Canyon did last night, and that's saying a lot. How lucky I was to find her.
I may not blog much of the next several days, but I will post something regarding Donner's situation at least.
Ed, from a cold, lonely tent in the Grand Canyon.
PS...quiet hours begin here at 10 pm. But at 10:30 now, you would not know it from two campsites near me.
