Pee is for Patience

Dear Carter,
I'm continuing on with the alphabet challenge, and I know that this just seems like a crazy title but hang with me...I'm just trying to kill two birds with one stone here.
As for the patience.
It is something that I definitely don't have enough of. I think that most mommies feel this way. Like you don't ever want to lose your cool with certain situations in your life, but sometimes...SOMETIMES you finally get to the end of your rope.
Lately I've had more and more of those days when I feel overwhelmed with the reality that I won't ever EVER see you again in this lifetime. I'm sure that it has to do with all of the "firsts" we've gone through in the last few months. Although I know that life in this world is only a sentence in our whole book, most of the time it doesn't feel that way. The only thing I can do is pray to God to give me the patience I need.
The patience to accept that our hearts will always have a piece missing. The piece that you carried with you to Heaven.
Now when I think about our journey together, I realize that your entire life was almost like a test of patience for me. It was stretching my patience...getting it ready for the trials that were to come. All of that time spent waiting for you to get out of the NICU, then smile, then gain head control, then grab objects were just little exercises to teach me that with enough patience I would finally see the reward at the end of the trial.
And in this case, that reward couldn't be greater. I will continue to do my best to have patience.
OK, so now onto a COMPLETELY different subject. Pee.
A couple of weeks ago, after my chasing of Brutus around the neighbor's car while the brand new neighbors watched me run in circles, and the other neighbor held back her huge German Shephard from eating Brutus...we noticed that Ajax had a little issue with his pee.
Poor puppy.
I called the vet, and they told me to bring him in the next morning. They also wanted me to bring in a urine sample. After scratching my head for a few moments, I asked them how in the world I was going to manage that? They suggested that I use a soup ladle to catch it. After informing your Daddy of this situation, he asked if he could take a day off of work to film my attempt at this...I politely declined.
The whole process went better than expected, and we were off with the sample in tow. After he was checked out, it was decided that he had a bladder infection. He was put on antibiotics and sent home. Ajax was doing well after a couple of days, so I figured we had gotten over this, but over the weekend he started acting funny again. I'm taking him back into the vet in the morning, and they are going to do an X-Ray. The doctor thinks that he probably has bladder stones which will require surgery. I'm really hoping and praying that we don't have to go that route. You'd think I'd be used to all of the medical stuff by now, but this one is a new one for me.