My boy Chief is sick. [emoji22]He got sick about two days ago, and being the curious boxer that he is it's not extremely unusual for him to get into something/eat something that he shouldn't and be sick for about a day. As I went to sleep yesterday (around noon) I asked my mom to keep an eye on him as I was surprised that he wasn't feeling better by then. She woke me up a few hours later telling me we needed to take him to see a vet. He was finally up on his feet but he couldn't walk, he was off balance, he was disoriented, his head was cocked to the side, his tongue was hanging out of his mouth, and his eyes wouldn't stop darting back and forth. It was pretty hard to watch my boy like that. I got up and drove us all to a 24 hour emergency vet clinic in Round Rock where their initial guess was that it was one of two things: vestibular disease (common in older dogs/boxers, and treatable), or a brain tumor (common in older boxers, and deadly). We sat in the parking lot with Chief for a little over an hour before he could be admitted. We had to wait in the parking lot for another couple of hours before they told us to go home, and that they'd be doing tests on him and would call us later. I got a call around 11 last night saying that it wasn't vestibular disease (bad news), but that they didn't know what it was. They said his white blood cell count was high and they didn't know why, and they asked my permission for more tests and I gave it to them (I'm on disability and I get $522/month- right now the bill is $3400 and i don't even care as long as they take care of him). They said that a neurologist would see him and that he would call me in the morning. The neurologist called today and said that Chief has a serious inner ear infection which certainly affected his balance/ability to walk. However, they had to perform a spinal tap, and this revealed that Chief has meningitis which they fear may have spread to his brain. That said, they are hopeful that they caught it early enough to get Chief to be able to recover. He's going to stay at the hospital for at least another night, and they will call me again tomorrow with an update. Everyone loves their dog, but i have no problems saying this- Chief is damn near all I have. I lost my job in 2015 because of my health problems, and had to move back home to my mom's house and haven't been able to work more than one very seasonal job since then. With all of my friends and peers being married/working/raising kids/out of state/etc, all I really have is my mom and our two dogs, and Chief is my boy. He turned 9 on February 20th, and he has so much boundless energy and was in such good shape that I expected him to possibly be around longer than me. Now all of that is up in the air, and I am disconsolate. Please pray for my boy if that's your thing. I just want him to be able to come home and be himself again. I love my boy Chief more than anything. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk