My Best Christmas Present

Hi, I'm back. Although I had my flu shot in September like a good girl, the experts who decide what strain to vaccinate  for each year really blew it this time. There's a flu epidemic here and in many areas of the country. It wasn't the way I planned to spend the holidays but......  So for a couple of posts I'm going to use the Blogville time machine and go back to just before Christmas and catch up the time I missed.

 On October 1st, Rob and I took Fudge to visit Dr B. He was having trouble walking, was falling a lot and wasn't his normal happy self. I had convinced myself that he had bone cancer in his left front leg. The doc examined him and watched him struggle to walk, then we had a long talk.

He said he couldn't rule out cancer in that leg but it was also possible that Fudge had either broken a bone or torn a ligament in the carpal region. There was a lot of swelling and pain. He also observed that Fudge was not acting normally. We opted to give him pain meds and take a wait and see position.

The next few weeks were difficult for me. Fudge didn't want me out of his sight, so I tried to accommodate him. We kept him confined to the living room during the day and the bedroom at night. We helped him down the front steps when he needed to go out and only walked him a few feet, then back to the living room. One day Rob walked him as far as the neighbor's house, only a few yards and Fudge slept all the next day. That little bit of exercise exhausted him. We started preparing ourselves for the possibility that Fudge wouldn't make it to Christmas.

The pain medicine helped and Fudge became more alert and started moving around a little more by himself. The swelling in his leg went down considerably and with some help he could climb onto the couch to lie next to me.

Then one morning at the beginning of December I was reading my email and I came across  one about joint pain in dogs. The veterinarian who had written the article mentioned some supplements that she uses for arthritic dogs. Most of them I recognized and already use such as glucosamine chondroitin, fish oil and tumeric. Then she casually mentioned one that I'd never heard of, moringa.

I looked up moringa and was amazed that I'd never heard of it. It's a tree native to India and grown in the tropics of Asia, Africa and South America. It's widely used by humanitarian organizations to combat malnutrition and has been used for centuries for it's medicinal value. Several articles listed scores of health issues that moringa is supposed to help. The one I was interested in was arthritis and joint pain.

I ordered a bottle of moringa capsules from Amazon and decided to try them myself before using them on Fudge. After two wrist fractures and four hand surgeries, I have tendonitis in my hands and wrists and arthritis in my fingers. I wanted to test our my new discovery and see if I could detect a difference. Recently my arthritis has made my fingers stiff and painful. I can only knit a couple of rows, then have to soak my fingers in ice water and rest them for several hours.  This would be a good test of the supplement.

I took one moringa capsule each morning for three days. On the  fourth day I woke up without any pain in my fingers and they weren't stiff at all. I put them to the real test. I picked up my knitting and started. Three hours later I was still knitting and I had absolutely no pain. OK, it was Fudge's turn.

Fudge has been taking moringa daily since then and he is getting up and down with no help. The swelling is almost gone in his leg and his front legs no longer turn inward. He can do stairs by himself, though I limit his use  of stairs. He still has a limp and always will from the stroke he had two years ago. Now Fudge joins the other dogs for meals and sometimes wanders around the back yard on his own.

Fudge can jump onto the couch now without help and when he gets excited he does a funny little skip instead of running.

My Christmas wish came true. Fudge was with us for Christmas and he's feeling good. I bought Rob some moringa seeds and he's building a greenhouse to grow our own trees. He and I and all the dogs take it daily now and our quality of life has improved.