November 14, 2014
Seamus is still with us, still going strong.
He’s a dear dog, in his own silly ways, and is doing surprisingly well with the transition considering he’s had to be shuttled hundreds of miles and spent a lot of time with near-strangers over the past few months.
We’re working through his health problems, it’s taking a lot of elbow grease, and an incredible amount of cooperation from him. Doggle was always a sweetheart but even he occasionally had opinions about being tended to.
His ears have probably never been cleaned. We spent an hour with his head in my lap as I worked out all the guck with cotton balls, gauze pads and the occasional Q-tip. (Word of warning: Vets don’t really like for people to use Q-tips. They’re easy to lose in long ear canals. But since I’ve done this a million times and have done it both professionally and with professional supervision, I’m comfortable with it.)
His nails have probably never been trimmed. I snuck up on him during a nap and trimmed them… a few minutes after I was done and left, he cracked open an eyelid.
His skin still looks pretty bad. All the scabs and bumps from his condition are still not resolved, but it doesn’t look red, angry and patchy anymore. We think he may always be on some kind of medication, given the as-yet undiagnosed condition and how slow it’s been to respond to a LOT of care.
Regular medications. Without Doggle around, it takes a LOT more effort to get this guy to take his medications. Doggle always lurked during the pill rolling (I use pill pockets so we didn’t always have to pill them), so Seamus was convinced anything I offered was going to be fantastic and he couldn’t swallow it fast enough. No competition = no motivation, apparently! The plus side, though, is that PiC has learned how to pill a fairly cooperative dog, so there’s that 🙂
Needles needles needles. With no vaccine history that I know of, we had to subject Seamus to the full battery of vaccines and he’ll have to get boosters next year. After that, he’ll be fine to transition to a 3 year schedule.
But the biggest thing was his surgery. At his age, I hated to put him under anesthesia but he really needed to be fixed for obvious reasons and as he was at risk for cancer. PiC’s convinced that being the drop-off man means that Seamus held a grudge about the surgery but after a few days on pain meds, the old boy is nearly good as new. The vet gave us a huge discount (about 33%) and the bill still pushed $900. Thank goodness for savings.
***
It’s been a rough few months but he’s such a trooper and chock full of personality. I’m still glad we decided to commit to it.
September 10, 2014
I’ve been having what feels like more than my fair share of scary or awful symptoms lately. I won’t get into defining what’s fair, for the purpose of staying on track here, though. There’s been the usual (dizziness, intermittent nausea, pain rotating through the body, cramping of all sorts, weakness) plus a dash of new, weird, annoying stuff (chest pain, difficulty breathing) so basically it’s been like throwing a bright springtime picnic.
At some point there was a definitive moment, while contemplating all of the weird, that it seemed clear that something had to be different, this wasn’t just the usual “I’m broken” kind of wrong. Amid the usual range of random symptoms that cycle through, it’s usually impossible to tell when a new symptom is actually different.
Despite my typical assumption that I’m just broken, I ventured a test anyway. It was a bit on the early side and so to keep us on tenterhooks, the home test strip (1 line for no, 2 lines for yes) came up: one and a half. Seriously.
It took a blood test and an ultrasound, for me to actually believe: I’m expecting. We’re expecting. There’s gestating going on in what I have always referred to as a non-childbearing *waves hand* midsection. Did you know it’s possible to almost immediately start having symptoms in Weeks 5 and 6? As PiC said, “you can have symptoms this early??” Not cool.
It’s been weird. All kinds of weird. Both from the gestating POV and from being among a lot of blog and offline friends who are in baby stages of life, either having had them or struggling with having them, and I find myself torn. I hurt for those friends who are hurting and there’s a small part of me that’s hesitant to be happy about having a thing they want so much.
Because this is, despite all my practical reservations, a thing that I find myself happy about. Over the years, practical reservations have ruled my thinking: family health and financial history, my health issues, who the hell knows how we’re going to raise a child to be a good thinking human being without any help we don’t hire except for the few loved ones who might be able to come over for a week or handful of days, and BTW the Bay Area is frakkin’ expensive.
You might see where I derail into all of the scary life things and start to forget that this is actually a good thing. It is. I’m grateful that it didn’t require serious intervention and ever so grateful that I’m even able to conceive at all. Infertility, multiple miscarriages, difficult pregnancies and all are common in my family and at my age, with my health … I’m grateful.
And because I’m grateful and happy and possibly even a reserved excited about it (because again, early days), I’m trying to concentrate on what’s in front of me.
What IS in front of me?
Food is a problem. I LOVE food but uhm. This microscopic alien has literally run my life from minute to minute. I eat driven purely by instinct. In a single day, I might be repulsed by the very names of my normal foods, only cold veggies and orange juice allowed, then desperately need a steak. Cravings are normal and I typically ignore them but this level of craving is ridiculous.
I alternate between wanting to do ALL the cleaning and wanting to do nothing at all. Energy aside, my brain has become subject to an ON/OFF switch flipped by who knows what.
The seventeen trips to the bathroom a day have commenced and I’m possibly more annoyed about that than anything else but I suspect something else will top it soon enough.
Even after having it officially confirmed, it still doesn’t feel real. After all, fatigue and queasiness is a normal fibro/fatigue symptom for me. But as it turns out, there is a reason for it and it has a heartbeat. A heartbeat. This is weird.
When I’m fatigued, it’s about as bad as any kind of fatigue I’ve had ever, but as I described to a friend, it’s like I walk around w/50 lbs of bricks on my back daily. What’s another 5 or 10 bricks? They suck but I’m already accustomed to slog through a swamp, bearing lead weights.
All the literature keeps warning me and PiC to tolerate my mood swings but so far they’ve been:
1. If I can’t eat food today, again, I’m going to yell at someone.
2. If I can’t sleep tonight, again, I’m going to collapse.
Those probably aren’t considered moods, though.
This doesn’t in any way mitigate the pain of losing Doggle. However well intentioned, please don’t suggest that it does or it will. In some ways, it’s almost worse, Doggle loves – loved – small children (and really loves – loved – the smell of them); there were few things that could get his attention but concern for a crying child has always been at the very top of that short list, easily trumping anything else.
We had very much looked forward to introducing him to his human sibling to love and grow up with.
September 2, 2014
I’m still hardly about to talk about it, still leaning on PiC and some close friends very heavily to explain why I’ve been so quiet except for some heartbroken sobs on Twitter, but it feels wrong to continue on not saying anything at all.
I can’t memorialize him yet, I can barely accept that this is true, much less find the words to properly eulogize him that won’t further destroy me in the doing.
When I lost Mom, I almost viciously forced myself to say she was gone. It was both scourge and self flagellation to force myself to say those words I knew to be true and desperately needed not to be; a soul-scouring attempt to face the truth and absolve myself of my failings in taking care of her. It didn’t work but it kept the guilt and the grief somewhat at bay for months.
This is … in some ways, this is almost worse. In the suddenness, in the senselessness, in the overwhelming rawness of prostrating grief, I can’t bring myself to cope as I once did. Because he was our responsibility and I cannot absolve myself of the failure to protect him.
“People have forgotten this truth,” the fox said. “But you mustn’t forget it. You become responsible forever for what you’ve tamed. You’re responsible for your rose.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
We didn’t tame him, we just gave him a new life with us, somewhat pampered though he hardly seemed to notice, and he was coming into his own in these few short years as my wonderfully loving, opinionated and constant “coworker”, my therapy dog, we called him.
PiC was his favorite person in the entire world, you couldn’t match his dance of joy upon being reunited with his papa even after just a few minutes’ absence, and together we were a family. There wasn’t a person, dog lover or not, who didn’t fall for his charmingly quiet, happy personality; many became convinced they wanted a dog “just like him”, after a single visit.
He was our cat-dog, we joked, he being thoroughly exasperated by the hugs I always wanted to give him, and mostly keeping his distance lest I pet him too much. But he clearly loved us. He had a funny way of insisting on family time, staying by our side no matter how late it was, no matter how annoyed he was that it was another late work night; he kept us both in view at all times as if simply by being in the middle, he ensured we stayed “together”.
He’s licked me on purpose exactly once, as an apology for terribly scraping up my foot; he’s inspected PiC’s awful injuries and given them a healing lick but no more than necessary.
As clumsy as the classic bull in the china shop, and yet the most gentle, non reactive companion to any infant or toddler whether he knew them or not, we always knew he’d make the best big brother.
And now our beloved Doggle is gone. We have no reasons and we have no explanations. The heart of our little family is gone and we don’t know how to bear it.
August 11, 2014
Hattip to Kelly for suggesting the code name, it gave me a chuckle over a rough time.
We recently took Sibling’s dog (we’ll call him #2 for now) home with us.
The most stressful part, the extrication, was almost as stressful as I had anticipated, though I’m grateful it didn’t have to turn into a dognapping. My dad wasn’t terribly helpful, and in fact I’d asked PiC to hang back with him since Sibling is historically belligerent when it comes to anyone else asking him to do anything. That, as it turns out, was for the best. The conversation was difficult, meandering in and out of his delusions – as if I needed further confirmation that he wasn’t mentally stable – but I was able to state pretty clearly the terms of the extrication: this was all to help #2 as best we could and we didn’t know how long it’d take. He was compliant which suggests that he only sort of listened but I had reiterated the very few talking points multiple times, and stated them again in front of my dad so that he’d be aware of what we agreed to, once Sibling agreed to let him leave with us.
I’d secured appointments for #2 two weeks in advance, adding to an already jam packed week: a slew of appointments for me and PiC together, me solo, and guests in town to boot.
So of course, the best laid plans …
Originally, we were slated for:
Pre-surgical Bloodwork: $80
Rabies vaccine: $15
Distemper/parvo vaccine: $15
Neuter: $150
Microchip: $15
Nail Trim: $5
Then we were going to address the bigger things.
After an initial exam, we were advised to deal with the bigger problems first instead of looking at the routine stuff. We visited the vet and $400 later, we came home with a slew of medications to alleviate #2’s pain and discomfort and I’ve been on the dogs’ schedules ever since.
The biggest adjustments:
Learning #2’s signals. He had an accident in the house because he’d asked me to take him out but I was so sleepy I didn’t understand what that particular tail wag meant. This is further complicated by the side effects of the medications he’s on, they increase his thirst and need to urinate. He’s doing his best to signal properly and we’re doing our best to take him out a lot more frequently to help his transition from being an outdoor to indoor dog.
Sharing time and space with Doggle. We now have two large dogs, who both want to be petted at the same time if you’re petting one, or walked together (even though they walk at totally different paces and don’t match strides at ALL), or fed together. They don’t fight, thank goodness, and #2 is great at BEING at Number 2, always deferring to Doggle, but you’re still now tripping over two dogs who want to be Right There. Doggle’s also not terribly sure about this interloper so he shoulder bumps #2 out of the way a lot. Again, no fighting, though.
Energy. Five. Walks. A Day. Two. Baths. A Week. *falls over*
I think we’re heading toward $600 so far, and we haven’t even gotten truly started on the serious veterinary stuff yet as it looks like his allergies may be the least of it. :/
Still, given how badly this could have gone, we’re mildly optimistic so far.
July 14, 2014
I’ve talked about Sibling’s dog before; I have hated leaving him there because I know he deserves better care and maintenance but couldn’t summon the strength to deal with:
1. the removal from one home,
2. installation into our home where we have breed restrictions,
3. while fighting an uphill battle with my Sibling over the removal,
4. acclimating New Dog into a small, yardless, abode.
That’s before you even consider all that he needs, aka, the reason we’d be taking him away in the first place.
Basic supplies: bed, leash, collar, food and water bowls, adequate food.
He’s either malnourished or underfed or both because he’s lost way too much weight.
Estimated cost: $300 to start, $45/month ongoing.
Medical supplies: he needs to be neutered, he’s got something going on with his skin that could be anything from a food allergy to … well, any number of things. But he’s breaking out and his poor enormous-dog paws are swollen and red and tender to the touch. The only thing he has got going for him is that his pearly whites are truly pearly white.
Estimated cost: $250 to start if I can book the animal shelter for the neutering, rabies vaccine, microchip, pre-surgery bloodwork if required due to age.
Then … $$$ for treating the skin issues if it’s not just food allergies or environmental causes.
Training: he’s been off-leash so long, he has to learn how to walk politely, on a lead, again.
Estimated cost: Time. Energy. Patience. Doggle’s patience.
Boarding: His rescue will happen before we have unchangeable plans to travel so we need to find a place that’ll board him for a reasonable amount. Brian suggested DogVacay.com which seemed really promising but it turns out most of them discriminate against certain breeds (and from at least one inquiry, based entirely on one bad incident which is preposterous considering the only bad encounters we’ve ever had at dog parks were with Golden Retrievers trying to kill Doggle, while none of the “aggressive” breeds were anything but lovely. This isn’t an isolated experience either, other dog owning friends have had the same experience, but you don’t hear us saying we can’t trust Goldens.)
***
Step One is still going to be horrible. I have to extract him safely and without triggering the Sibling in some way. I can stand him off on my own, I think, but what happens when we leave? What happens when he gets upset at how long the dog’s been gone? Does he try to come hunting us down and then I have a problem with an out of control sibling raging on our front step? Probably unlikely but not out of the question and what do I do then? Call the police and have him hauled off?
But I also can’t keep letting the possibility of his outrage or upset delay us any longer – the dog needs help and it’s clear to anyone else who looks at him.
We’re planning to make it happen this summer. We’re already going to be extremely busy and have our hands full but we’re doing our best to plan ahead to make it go as smoothly as possible. Do wish us luck – we’ll need it!
July 8, 2014
Doggle gets a very generous annual allowance in our budget, something of a reminder-to-self that it’s an expensive prospect having pets [just ask Funny About Money about her Ruby!]. At this point, I suppose you really could indeed put a price on all the hugs and kisses I force on the hapless, long-suffering Doggle.
We actually rarely spend the amount set aside for him, but overspending in other categories [ahem. food. lots of food. travel.] tends to eat into the unspent allowance so the annual spend sort of evens out. This year, however, we literally cannot afford to do that.
Our routine visit to the vet turned into anything but. I opted to do the full senior package: exam, bloodwork, urinalysis, fecal test. I normally would have passed on it but we needed the bloodwork anyway in anticipation of having his teeth cleaned, and we were a bit concerned about whether he had another issue going on. The senior package came with a 15% discount for follow-up labwork, and considering the possible follow-ups we’d need to do, I decided to go with it. $333 later, we found…
He didn’t have a chronic gland problem but instead we found an asymptomatic infection so we’ve been treating that to the tune of $317 for a two week supply of antibiotics. *faint* I immediately compared the clinic pharmacy price to the cost online and found that we weren’t being seriously overcharged, we would have paid very close to that price if I’d ordered from say, 1-800-petmeds.
Two weeks of exhausted Doggle on meds later, our follow-up labwork ($130) showed that he STILL had an infection. On the merest brighter side of the ledger, I insisted that the receptionist follow up with the vet to confirm that the 15% discount should have applied to that charge, so we scraped back a whole $19.50. Much good that’ll do us in the face of a second round of antibiotics ($150) and another lab test after that. At least we’ll save another $19.59 on the third test. *skeptical brow*
When we finally lick this infection, we’ll then fork over nearly $1000 for his dental. He’s in dire need of a really good cleaning, probably never having had one, as his teeth look dodgy, breath smells worse, and I am pretty sure there are broken teeth that need checking. He’s going to love that. And probably will have to have yet another round of antibiotics if the teeth have to come out.
Where are we, that’s about $2000? Well. Of course, that’s not the end of the story – why would it be?
But I think I’ll have to save that for another post. This one just takes the wind out of my sails as it is.
December 15, 2013
As we pass the 2nd anniversary of Mom’s passing, I’ve been sitting with a good friend who has recently lost her mother, discussing grief and the process of grieving.
In some ways, it’s not a simple thing, not an easy progression of steps, nor a checklist you can tick off one bit at a time and arrive at an end.
In other ways, it really is quite simple to understand the gauntlet once you’ve gone through it.
“I was fine at her memorial. I was smiling and talking to people. It didn’t look like her. It didn’t feel like she was gone.”
Yes. I remember that feeling of surreal unreality.
“I’ve cried every day since burying her. I still can’t go into the same stores that I used to shop.”
Me neither. I’d run, crying, out of a grocery store because the memories were just too much. It wasn’t even one that we visited together. It was the visceral memory of a childhood habit that gripped my heart and wouldn’t let go.
“I keep asking myself why I didn’t take her to X, why did I choose to do Y instead of Z? Why didn’t I ..”
I’ve second guessed every decision I made in the last twelve years. Constantly. I’m convinced that I was the worst daughter ever because the end, ultimate, result was that she died, never having recovered from her illness.
You could float on the sea of “if onlys” and “what ifs” that we create, in our grief, treading and retreading our memories.
Hindsight, as they say, is 20-20.
But is it really? Is it really so much clearer now that events have irrevocably transpired?
A truth I’ve had to learn is that the other choice always seems like it would have been better only because I already know the outcome of the choices I did make. I have no idea what would have happened had I gone somewhere else for undergrad, if I had pursued a Masters or Doctorate. Maybe I would have had to drop out and be even less prepared to do the basics of supporting the family.
There’s a song by Little Texas that gets me EVERY time I hear it.
That knowledge doesn’t stop me feeling bone-deep regret for not pursuing a white collar profession where I could have earned enough to buy her health insurance outright (even though that would have taken years), or for being angry with her, not just her disease, as she became more ill and less mentally competent. I couldn’t take the step back at the time, it was easier to be angry than to accept and understand that I was losing her.
What might have been
In the aftermath, even after nominally accepting that I, mostly, did the best I could, and failed, I wonder what could have been done differently. And I wonder how much of my choices, and non-choices, affected this family.
Before carrying me to term, Mom had a few miscarriages.
What would have happened if I hadn’t been the one to make it?
What if my brother had a brother like he wanted?
Or what if he had grown up as an only child, with all the attention he clearly needed, without a “weak” (but meaner than a pit of crocs) little sister to take care of and be bitten for his efforts?
What if he hadn’t had me to practice his machinations and manipulations on?
What if he didn’t have a “follower” sibling with my personality and strong inclinations to academic achievement to contend with and push against in his attempts to lead me? Would he have actually reached to do something with his abilities instead of playing the comparison game and not even trying?
It’s part of the family lore that after a few days (or weeks, I forget) of getting to know me, my sibling picked me up and suggested they return to the hospital to trade me in for a better model. Unfortunately for him, hospitals didn’t accept returns at the time or I’m sure he would have just taken me himself. Kids feel that sort of thing all the time, but I wonder whether they all really would have been better off without me?
Without an extra mouth to feed, a second child to clothe, educate and worry about, would my parents have been less stressed, and more able to save? Did their circumstances dictate the outcome, or would their actions have been much the same?
Would my sibling have been the productive citizen and son that my parents prayed for? Would he have learned to use his copious people skills and talents towards a job or career, would he have felt the unbearable weight of responsibility that I grew up with, or would that still have eluded him?
Was it my fault, my existing, that played a key role in his failure to thrive? Is his failure to find a niche where he would excel attributable to my combative and competitive nature?
These are intertwined but I can’t help but realize that, like the butterfly flapping its wings, my very existence changed things.
Was it for the better?
I can’t know. I do know that as the surviving fetus, as the kid who did come along second, eventually, whatever ill my coming boded, I always felt a pressing weight. I knew fairly early on about Mom’s miscarriages. I know about the bigger than usual gap in years between my sibling and myself. Where other kids were two years apart like clockwork, we were about 3 years apart and, oh, the strength of will it must have taken for her not to smother me mid-scream in the first nine months I spent crying my lungs out.
It always seemed like I lost the genetic lottery: as the scrawny, untalented (no eye for art, terrible ear for music, only Doggle matches my astounding level of clumsiness), not terribly smart, really a bit of drifter with no dreams, youngest child, I only knew that I had to compensate and overcompensate to justify having made it.
The ghosts of those other babies, the ones my parents never met, haunted me a little. What could they have done with the gift of life? Would they have had the talent? Would they have inherited Mom’s gift with numbers, Dad’s ability to dream for the future? Would he or she, or they, have been the charmers, able to mingle and make friends everywhere they went? I certainly didn’t get any of that, so was that lost with them, leaving me with only remnants of determination and a strange love of containers to work with?
Sometimes it feels like all I have are questions, a sense of those nearly siblings’ unfulfilled potential, the uncomfortable prickles of something like guilt.
Without dwelling on the macabre, there are some studies that suggest that the influence of a sibling, past a certain point in life, is a stronger force in the development of an individual than even that of a parent. Anecdotally, I could see this. I learned from my parents, authoritatively, but I viscerally reacted to my sibling. At a much deeper level, I absorbed what I know of human nature from my interactions with him, by growing up next to him, and observing his experiences. By following my big brother. And I can’t know how my existence, my following, and my watching affected him. A bit like Schrodinger’s Cat, I guess.
Having made it this far, it feels like it’s my job to make good, to redeem the family name. I can’t change the past, I can only work toward the future.
I try not to think about
What might have been
‘Cause that was then
And we have taken different roads
We can’t go back again
There’s no use giving in
And there’s no way to know
What might have been