Black Friday

  - certainly is not a fun shopping day for Yours Truly! Despite the fact that it's a beautiful-blue-skies, mild-winter-in-North-Texas kinda day, my mood itself is quite black. Time for "The Rest of the Story":

8 days ago (Thurs 11/21), my mom slipped down to her bathroom floor & couldn't get herself up. The facility has strict guidelines; they will not lift a resident off the floor, they have to get themselves up (I guess I partially understand that from a liability standpoint, but c'mon! Grandma's on the cold hard tile, and all you'll do is bring her a pillow to cushion her head until the paramedics arrive?!?) - so an ambulance was summoned, Mom was taken to the ER, and we spent a tedious afternoon & evening getting radiographs, CT, & bloodwork. Fortunately, nothing was broken, Mom was ultimately diagnosed w/a UTI, given IV antibiotics & a breathing treatment (they kept asking if she was on oxygen which she has not been up until this point)

I spent the next 3 days trying to line up extra care for her (good luck with THAT over a weekend!) and, last but not least, tracking down her prescription which had vanished into the stratosphere! I finally retrieved it from the Walgreen's in South Dallas where it had been inexplicably phoned in for God knows whatever reason? Undoubtedly that caused a setback, but on Saturday Mom was feeling well enough that I got her showered & dressed & took her to my cousin's for our Early Thanksgiving family reunion & feast. I took but a single photo:

Yesterday, for The Day Itself, I prepared more cornbread dressing, sweet potatoes, deviled eggs, & Z's favorite spicy Chex mix to convene at Victoria's grandmother's for another celebration. Unfortunately, poor Andy remains in skilled nursing/rehab section of the VA; I didn't know if they would try to "spring him" which quite honestly might seem like cruel & unusual punishment?  I keep trying to put myself in Andy's position: would I want to be faced with bounteous plenty with a feeding tube? I know the delay in getting my mom back on her antibiotics caused a setback (only time will tell if this deficit can be overcome?), so I did not even try to get her out yesterday...

I'm going to write a note to Cousin Vanessa since there never seems to be a good time to call. I feel woefully unprepared to offer her much of anything as my own life seems to have spiraled out of control. I'm so far behind I don't even know where to begin? Taxes are always the first logical/inevitable step - I was actually on my way to talk to my CPA Thursday before last when I was interrupted by mom's ER trip. Death & taxes, those two constants! Tina Fea has gone on another hunger strike as well. Little dog, you're breaking my heart in another sort of way.

At least I still seem to have the intellectual capacity to defeat Mijo at chess - but lemme tell ya, it was a long, brutal, messy battle!

No Fairytales

 We are a pretty up-close-&-personal, in-your-business type of family… I’ve made lighthearted commentary for years that I don’t have siblings, I have cousins! (Of course that was proven in error 4 years ago with the discovery of my half-sister, but that’s still a deep dark secret to most of the family - even though I am not ashamed about an apparent torrid romance my dad had prior to marrying my mom**, I still need to keep this fact from drifting across my mom‘s consciousness even as she grows increasingly detached)

** during our sole weekend meet-up, Linda & I determined that she was conceived during a brief “hall pass” break when my grandfather had taken my mom out of the country on vacation. I guess you could consider that unfaithfulness, put that’s my thorny ethical dilemma for another day. “She is dead now; dead & buried” - a poor paraphrase

Anyway I’m still in shock from learning that my cousin’s husband of almost 25 years has left her: 4 almost-grown kids, a huge historic home in Waxahachie, and an empty résumé. (Vanessa has devoted herself to being a SAHM) I’m terrified for her - not that I’m trying to hold the tragedy sweepstakes; while I think it was more traumatic to be abandoned with a newborn, at least I had a career & an income source I could lean into. I need to reach out to her to be sure she is protecting herself: of course Texas does not have any requirements for spousal support or alimony; we have to hope that Robbie plays fair. I wonder who his side piece is - I’ve seen it proven over & over again: men don’t leave unless there is somebody else.

Primum Non Nocere

 “First, Do No Harm”

I may have one of those hard decisions facing me today, if poor little Tina Fea made it through the night. I left her hospitalized at the clinic after throwing a few “Hail Mary” treatments at her, but I’m not gonna let her suffer. It’s remarkable how quickly one can get attached. It is my working theory that her former owners dumped her out of an inability to face these choices.

I think my all-time record is six euthanasias in one day, and there are many times when seems like it’s the topic of discussion several times a day. Folks think it’s the hardest part of my job but it is not - what’s hard are convenience euthanasias, behavioral cases or those of economic necessity… “Most” of the time it is a mercy, as I’m relieving suffering.

But this morning I’m dragging my feet - also hope my guy is well underway in fixing what he didn’t get hooked up correctly with repairs to my septic system! Just when I think I’m getting ahead, there goes almost $9000 for that, not to mention another $3000 in prep work for the new power pole/upgrades so I can get the X-ray machine reinstalled at long long last. I’ll have lots of excuses when I skulk around to talk to my CPA.

Dr. W is scheduled to pick up the surgery trailer December 5th; I think I can hang on by my fingernails until then.

Sisyphus’s Travels

 I hauled off for a mini-overnight horse camping trip, even though I shouldn’t have run (limped) headlong away from my duties for the weekend - “I’m so far behind I think I’m in first place!”

Little Bit (Tina Fea) didn’t adapt well to her first camping trip and has gone on a hunger strike. She vomited Saturday afternoon which I blamed on delayed carsickness, but I ran some bloodwork on her yesterday & uncovered some liver issues - great!!! that may be why she’s so skinny & why her owners dumped her (often times owners won’t take on the responsibility of euthanizing a pet with an incurable health problem - I guess they think slow starvation is better??)

I really hate the human race sometimes - but she ate a few bites of a different canned food last night, I got her meds down her even though this morning she didn’t want to eat again. We’ll struggle along for a bit longer, but if I can’t get her to eat consistently I will release her from her suffering.  The least I can do is give her a decent end of life - it’s amazing how quickly one gets attached. Aka “you can’t save ‘em all”; of course that’s the lesson that was drilled into me by cold hard experience from my very earliest days working in veterinary medicine…

But speaking of human medicine - we were shorthanded yesterday when Kristy had to go help her dad (staying with her mom while he had his own doctor’s appointment), and I suspect she’ll be out today as well. Kristy had shown me a picture of her mother last week: the poor woman is wasting away, & yesterday she showed Misti & me a candid snap of her parents, who look like the zombie apocalypse - a pair of ragged survivors! Kristy is praying that she is released from her suffering before the end of the year. Last week I went to the visitation for her adoptive grandma - seems like all I do these days is attend funerals and fill out sympathy cards.

But in the meantime we’ll struggle on and try to extract a few grams of joy from the experience - the weather was perfect at Lake Waco; I can’t believe in all these years I have never been to these trails? They are a little bit tricky since there is a single point of access and then many loops of interconnected trails (it’s not a very big park). I’m jealous of my friends who got to stay over for the Veterans Day holiday but look forward to going back to explore it some more.

I’m trying to store up as many good memories as I can for the days when I really can’t do this anymore

                                            "Behold the Lost Oak Lagoon!"

“The Life You Save Might Be Your Own”

 Sorry to disappoint anyone, but I did not haul off to the ride in Oklahoma this past weekend. It turned out to be a Perfect Storm of excuses - the most important being that I had a crew trimming trees at the clinic so Oncor can install my new power pole & transformer, upgrading our power so I can reinstall my X-ray machine! I could’ve just as well have titled this “The Never-ending Project”… (periodically, I’ll go back and skim entries from last year so I am well aware things could be far FAR worse)

And speaking of worse outcomes, I then attended the funeral for one of our animal control officers. Poor Drew requested a new assignment from his supervisor on Friday - of course he promised to get right on it, but Drew couldn’t make it through the weekend. It seemed almost surreal for the young pastor to be making the pitch for mental health services. I’m glad I went even though it was difficult; it seemed to mean a lot to Drew’s widow for me and Dr Brown (my young colleague from Red Oak who had also worked with Drew) to be there. Most of the local animal control services sent representation - they drove their trucks and had their lights flashing in the parking lot, lining up to form an honor guard of sorts when we went into the reception.

https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/legacyremembers/drewrey-daily-obituary?id=56589064&_gl=1*u49c5d*_gcl_au*NDAyNTczNTkwLjE3MzA0NzkzMjQ.

Since I stayed in town, I fulfilled another obligation Sunday - picking up Heather’s gelding to see what I can do with him. TwoFace reminds me a great deal of dear old Quigley and my sincere wish was to pawn him off on my cousin but he’s still working on fencing…

When I had to run into town last night (Hubby & I kept overlooking  the need for bleach), I stumbled into another rescue - a scrawny elderly little Chihuahua was running down the side of the road, darting into traffic! One lady had stopped, I pulled over to help but eventually it was a nice young Hispanic guy who ran her down. (on foot of course! I realize that wording sounded bad when I went back to proofread) No collar but I’ll scan her for a microchip** (Ha!) when I take her to work with me and a miracle might happen. Or God has sent me another dog…

**and of COURSE she doesn't have a microchip - but I've put her on my FB groups, maybe we will turn up her owner?!?