[Bellaandhelen]

Last night I took Bella to the Emergency Vet:

My husband and I had gone away from Fri-Sun to a conference and my mom and dad came in town to stay with Bella and Baci through the weekend and took excellent care of them. When I got back Sunday evening, I noticed Bella looked a little sad, her eyes looked sad to me and she was kind of lethargic, but I just told myself it was because she had missed me or something. I tend to overreact, so I was trying to be rational. Yesterday morning she seemed fine - eating, drinking, and pottying normally and running about in the backyard, normal on our morning walk. I came home at lunch and she seemed very lethargic. Usually she follows me everywhere in the house and she just curled up on the couch after pottying and didn't get up when I went to the door to return to work- which is very unusual, but it was a bit hot in the house- I had to readjust the airconditioning and again I attributed it to something else. Yesterday evening, she ate normally for dinner. I gave her the command to "sit" after dinner to give her a bully stick and I noticed her right hind leg sort of slipped out from under her as she sat- my gut said it was funny, but I gave her the bully stick and just kept observing. Then we went on our evening walk. Bella's stool started out normal, but then got really yellow/watery and appeared to have blood in it. She stopped several times having this diarrea with a little bright red blood in it. As we were approaching our house, I noticed that she seemed kind of wobbly on her hind legs- something just wasn't right. As soon as we got back to the house, I grabbed my phone to call my vet and have him paged to ask him about these symptoms and whether I should take her to the ER vet. Then, Bella tried to hop up on the couch and couldn't; her hind legs seemed to barely be working, so I scooped her up and rushed over to the emergency vet hospital.
The vet did an exam, a fecal flotation, and then an x-ray. She suspects that Bella may have degenerative disk disease. She said there were 4 stages. Stage one is pain, stage two- when you bend her little back feet back, they don't immediately flip back. I remember she said stage four is paralysis. She thought Bella was somewhere between stage 1 and 2. Bella's hind feet would sometimes flip back quickly and sometimes there seemed to be a delay. Also the vet told me that her reflexes were faster than they should be- which made her think that she was in pain. And there was an area of her spine that seemed painful to the touch. She said there might be a pinched nerve. When she did the x-ray, she told me it didn't look as bad as she thought it would. I really had trouble understanding her explanation of the x-ray though, so I am going to take it to my regular vet to see if he can explain better to me. The fecal came back negative.
The vet gave her: Cimetidine Inj 150mg/ml cc's, Solu-Medrol 500mg/8ml Inj cc's, Robaxin-V Inj 100mg/ml cc's in the office last night.
She is now taking Methocarbamol Tabs 500mg, Prednisolone 5mg, Metronidazole 250mg, Sucralfate 1 gram tabs. I know one is a steroid, one a muscle relaxer, one to calm her stomach, and one is an antibiotic. The vet told me to keep her confined to a crate for 2 weeks and give the meds.

I am now just starting to feel like my brain is working again. I was hysterical last night. I almost feel numb today because I'm so upset. Plus, I'm lacking so much sleep, I feel really slow. I would appreciate any advice as to what next steps to take. I just want to figure out what's wrong for sure and to do whatever I can do to make her better. Do I just take her to my regular vet- and how soon? Do I need to find a specialist of some sort? She hasn't had any other diarrea since the walk last night- but I'm still wondering what could have caused the blood. She slept well through the night and seems to be in less pain this morning. It's hard on me to put her in the crate- she hates it, but if that's what she needs to get better I'll do it. I'm at work now and will head home to see her at 11:30am.

Thanks in advance for any advice.