It’s the week of sickness again…
First Maddie goes to the vet for her routine infected feet romp. New vet thinks it might be allergies. I don’t know what to think anymore. Anyway, the vet was giving her the once-over and said “has she always had this lump?”. That’s not a question I want to ever hear. More investigation shows that all of Maddie’s lymph nodes are gigantic, way bigger than expected for just an infection. Vet runs through a number of possibilities and suggests we screen for lymphoma.
In your mind you know your dog does not have lymphoma but you are unable to say ‘no’ because in your heart you know anything is possible with your dog that gets sick all the damned time. The doctor starts to discuss treatment options for Maddie’s feet but says we shouldn’t giver her the regular steroid shot because it could mess with the chemo if we have to start that next week.
Chemo? Next week? The vet sounded so damned sure. What the fuck? I just brought Maddie in for her routine antibiotics and steroid shot and suddenly we’re discussing chemotherapy for my dog?
Jesus.
I spent many hours consulting my animal loving friends about my options and my concerns about the most humane course of action. My goal with Maddie has always been to provide the happiest, most comfortable place she has ever had. For all that she has been through and all that she is inside that giant head, she deserves only the joy and comfort and none of the pain and illness (except for her fucking feet and her yeast infected left ear which is infected AGAIN).
It took longer than expected to get the results back from the lab but they came back negative. Maddie is all about the hugs and love! She doesn’t know what it is that I am celebrating but she seems to like it a lot.
As for me, I am one of those freaks of nature that carry strep in their bodies. I get strep infections in my throat pretty regularly but also in my bladder/ureters/kidneys. I got me a streptococcal UTI this week. Pain in the ass. It was about 2 years ago when we discovered that the regular UTI’s I was getting were not normal and they discovered that I was carrying the strep in there.
And it won’t go away. Maddie and I have a lot in common.
So now I am on new and awesomely fierce antibiotics that cause their own side effects.
and I spent the bulk of yesterday passed out in bed under many covers with dogs and the boy bundled in with me.
Okay, so, later I’ll come up with something happier to post about!

I just looked down to find a slug on my foot. A slug. On my foot.
It’s either 1) something I picked up while walking the dogs or 2) some sort of karmic repayment for feeding an ant covered cookie to Anna.*
David put it outside. All is good in the world
* of course Anna did clog my sinks and cause my wash machine to leak

“damn straight”
9 hours at the fair. I’m exhausted, my body hurts and I consumed a lifetime of calories. I’ll post pictures and more tomorrow.

My time with Dáithí has been pretty limited on this trip. He has been on assignment out of town. Last night David, Anna and I braved tornadoes and hail just to have dinner with him. I thought it might be a good idea to bring Anna along as she always seems to be in need of gentle ribbing and excess beer drinkage. Dáithí decided to bring his computer geek coworkers along for the ride. We drank many beers and ate less-than-stellar food and tried to hook Anna up with a lonely IT dude (or protect her from him….not sure what my stance was on that particular subject).

This is Anna. She didn’t kill him. I am amazed

The obligatory “i’m taking a picture of you as you take a picture of me” shot. Sadly, his camera patteries died soon after this, I was going to fill his camera with surreptitious man ass shots.

Things devolved quickly

I don’t know why, but he gets so embarassed when he talks about the Grecian Isles.

Is any night complete without a Fonzie tattoo??

All of the college kids were back in town. I’d never seen such a concentration of second rate frat boys and date rape victims in my life and THEN we passed a second rate titty bar with freaky crusty guys and lap dancers who were not aging as gracefully as they had hoped to. This is Dáithí’s impression of Minnesota and for that I am very sorry.
Today, while I was at work, he got dropped off at the Mall of America where he spent the better part of four hours cringing in in the bowels of American capitalism. David and I rescued him and offered to take him to dinner. All the regular sit-down restaurants had enormous wait times or overly meat intensive menus. We decided it was high time he ate his first peanut butter sandwich. He’s never had one, apparently his mother sent him to school with cheese and tomato sandwiches instead of pb&j. He tried to convince me this was very European but I’m beginning to think there was some shoddy parenting going on.
We went over to PB Loco for crazy peanut butter sandwiches. Your first peanut butter sandwich ever should obviously be the most upsetting sandwich ever. His had sundried tomato peanut butter, lettuce, cucumber and cheese!!! He hated it. It was awful. He scraped the peanut butter off then destroyed the sandwich completely to make it seem like he ate some. I’m convinced he does not actually eat, he just smashes his food around to give the impression of progress.
My sandwich was delicious but if I described it here you would freak. On a positive note, I took all the hippo animal crackers off all our plates and made a hippo parade. That was pretty cool.
We dropped Dáithí off at the airport. My heart was heavy knowing that this could be the last time I ever see him. Who knows what the future holds. We were not able to spend very much time together, I wish we could have timed it better so I could have had time off work, but the time we did have was delightful and fun.
Tá mo bhríste trí thine
Go raibh maith agat, Dáithí
Fraoch Ban

this is just short and sweet. If any of you got a text message frm me tonight about me loing you and not wanting you to die, it wasn’t me. A certain tri-testicled Irish Jackass got ahold of my phone and sent messages to everyone I knew.
Also, if you received a call from a desperately lonely IT guy….well, aren’t all IT guys desperately lonely?