I thaid it'th THWOLLEN!

So there I was, in my pj's, watching tv, eating ice cream. Lucy, with her finely tuned radar for bowls that are one bite away from being empty, spits out the bug she's been torturing for the past 10 minutes and knocks on the screen to come in. I knew something was wrong when she didn't lick the bowl clean. And then when I sat on the floor and she didn't immediately start licking my face I got more worried. And she seemed to be acting kind of...weird.

You know how you plan how you're going to react in case of emergency? How you're gonna be calm and collected and all that crap? I'm proud to say I managed to get dressed (including underwear), blow out the candle, lock the back door and get her in the car in under 3 minutes. So I was dressed like a bag lady and I cursed out a sweet old lady who was taking too long to make a right turn, mostly I was calm.

Luckily the 24-hour emergency vet is only a few miles from my house and if you're doing 60 on the surface streets while having nightmarish visions of anaphylactic shock, it's a relatively quick trip.

Chief complaint? She didn't give me a kiss when I asked for it. Oh, and she refused people food. And she's not really opening her mouth at all.

We were in the waiting room for 5 or 10 minutes, during which time she started opening her mouth. I started thinking that maybe I had over-reacted until I realized it was because her tongue was swelling up. And she didn't look happy.

In a short period of time, she had her temperature taken and was whisked to the back where she received IV NSAIDS and Benedryl. After a half hour I had calmed down enough to realize that if I could hear her barking she probably wasn't on a respirator.

45 minutes after that, a scruffy bearded fellow brought her back to me and she immediately started giving me kisses with her only mildly swollen tongue.

We don't know what happened, if it was a bug bite or an ant bite or a bona-fide allergic reaction to something in the back yard. It appeared to only affect her tongue and it resolved quickly. All I know is she's not going to be unsupervised outside until I go over the porch with a fine-tooth comb.

I love you Lucy. We've been together for 9 years, 3 states, 2 boyfriends, 3 bouts of depression and 7 apartments. You're the closest thing I have to family within 2,000 miles. And if you ever scare me like that again, I'm eating all the ice cream myself.