The vet was very nice ??" a fellow sailor ??" and he gave M�rzen a shot to stop her vomiting and fluids under her skin to re-hydrate her. He also ordered some blood tests. Then he let us take her home. She seemed better last night but still couldn't keep anything down, most worrisomely not even water. She had a quiet night but started throwing up again early this morning, so we took her back to the hospital even before the vet we saw yesterday was due to come in. The new vet took a short look at her and admitted her.

The immediate concern is the dehydration. She'll be on IV fluids now for a few days. From the blood work, they think it's pancreatitis, although she doesn't seem to have the pain normally associated with it. Since we were concerned after talking with the vet yesterday that it might be kidney failure and that she could have diabetes (but that wouldn't explain the vomiting), this is somewhat of a relief even though pancreatitis is quite serious and can even be life-threatening.

So we'll be here in Oxnard (Channel Islands Harbor) at least until Saturday noon. Tom has gone to visit his sister Phyllis and will probably fly home out of Burbank. Our friend Kevin Steele is an attorney in LA, and we're going to have dinner with him tomorrow night. There are stores nearby (the vet hospital is on the edge of a shopping center), so we don't even need to rent a car. If M�rzen has to be sick, better that it's here than somewhere in Central America. (We're trying to look on the bright side.)