It's been a pretty stressful week for me.  Probably one of the worst in quite a while.  I've had a lot on my plate and everything just kind of fell by the wayside for me.

Last weekend, my sweet little Lucy stopped eating.  Food was completely uninteresting to her and she had no interest whatsoever in eating.  I've talked about her before and how she is on a special prescription diet because her digestive system can't handle regular food.  She's not a fan of what she can eat and will often protest her food, but she always caves in when she's hungry enough and eats.  Not this time.  She just stopped and that got me scared.  The last time something like this happened was with my old cat Puss Patrell.  She was fine and dandy and then one day she stopped eating.  With her, it turned out she had pretty advanced cancer and within a few days, she was gone.  Naturally, this is the first and only thought I had with Lucy and I was panic stricken.  We got her to the vet and she thought after the initial examination that Lucy might have pancreatitis.  It's inflammation of the pancreas which would cause her not to want to eat.  We left Lucy at the vet for more tests, observation and medication.  Her blood work came back great and her x-rays showed a hazing around the pancreas.  After a day of meds, she started bouncing right back.  We brought her in on Tuesday and she was supposed to stay until Friday, but she was doing so well they released her on Thursday.  The only test we don't have results back from yet is her ultra-sound, but we're hoping that comes back clean.  Right now all I care about is Lucy is feeling better, her appetite is stronger than it's been in a long time and she's home.

But Lucy wasn't the only thing I've been worried about.  My little cousin Zach is the other.  Technically, he's my first cousin's grandson, but he's still my cousin.  Third cousin?  I don't know how that works.  Anyway, last weekend Zach, age 9, had a series of three seizures with the third lasting over an hour and he ended up in the hospital on a ventilator and in a coma.  He's been having seizures for the last couple of weeks.  His first one hit while he was at summer camp and it took away all the feeling on his right side.  It starting coming back, but he was still pretty weak.  No cause has yet been determined.  He's had tests up the wazoo, though.  He's had them on and off since, but last weekend was the worst.  He's been diagnosed with autoimmune encephalitis, something that's not good at all.  Still no idea what's caused this.  He's still in the hospital, but as of yesterday, he's come out of his coma.  He's still not strong enough to breathe on his own, though, so he's still being helped with the ventilator.  I'm just relieved he's awake again.  

So needless to say I've had a lot on my mind.  I've had the worst stress headache of my life this week.  My head hasn't been with me at work and I've blown off the overtime because I just couldn't do it.  I'm happy that things are slowly getting better, though.  It's a huge relief.  Lucy may be out of the woods, but Zach isn't yet.  But we're making progress.  Slow but steady progress.  And that's all I can ask.