fingerbabyfoodstravaganza

Just thought I'd share a picture of Cameron finger-feeding Honey some strained peas / prunes / lamb baby food at around 2:30am Monday.... It took about an hour but we got some food down her. Strained prunes and opiates - breakfast of champions. (please note the prunesplatter on his leg)

Her painkillers are so high now that she won’t stand up and rearrange if she can’t find a good breathing position. She’ll stay put and gasp every 45 seconds for hours. I can hear the gasp noise even through earplugs (35 db) and that means I have to stay awake to get her to sleep before i can fall asleep. Friday and Sunday this was around 4, Saturday it was 6:30. I feel like I'm 127.

And this would be really funny if it wasn’t so sad – she KNOWS she’s not allowed to rub her face on stuff, so she waits until I’m out of the room. And she’s getting really good at doing it quickly, so I’ll go into the kitchen and pour some juice, and walk back into the living room and she’s bleeding, but she managed to do it when I wasn’t looking. I’ve also caught her mid-headroll on a pile of warm laundry, which then has to be re-washed, but how can you do laundry and not let your sick dog sleep in it? It’s impossible. I seriously can't figure out how she can complete a headroll so fast when walking across the room takes her a full minute. Amazing.

OMG I slept! (2 more radiatoin sessions!!!!)

Last night Honey went to sleep on her own bed for the first time in over a month. She was lying on her side with her head hanging off her bed, sort of with her nosicle pointed down towards the floor, and we stuck a lip prop in her mouth and she went to sleep, breathing well. Unfortunately we were both so freaked out because she was sleeping on the floor (is that bad? Should we worry? Should we call her?) that we didn’t get to sleep until around 1:45, to be woken up by Honey getting on the bed and laying on me at about 2:12 (by ‘on me’ I mean curled up tightly against me, with her chin and a paw on my leg or stomach. That’s her favorite) so I covered her in a throw, stuck in a lip prop and wadded a shirt up under the side of her head, as she cant breathe unless her head is tilted to the side. I woke up at 6:35 with my alarm and neither she nor I had moved. I feel like a total glutton for getting 4 hours of sleep at once. It’s awesome.

The bad news of the day is that my orchids have MOLD in their potting matrix. I have no idea what to do about this – I looked some stuff up online and it says to repot them as soon as they’re done blooming. Shoot, I have no idea how long that will be, as they both just bloomed, and won’t they die in the mean time? it also said to “wash their roots to insure no mold spores remain” apparently these people think mold spores are about the size of small pebbles, because there is no way you can “insure no mold spores remain” without soaking the roots in boiling acid. Anyone know how to fix this??

Lip-propinazation (I just made that word up. Just now. Really)

I mention ‘the lip prop’ on this blog a lot, but I haven’t posted a picture of its exact usage. Let me remedy that. The ones pictured here are made from a piece of a gardener’s knee pad (thick foam) that I got at Home Depot. I cut a piece about an inch wide and five inches long, then folded the foam in half and stitched it so it makes a V shape. It works well because it’s not hard, so it doesn’t irritate her gums or lips, like hard plastic could, and the V shape creates enough pressure that we can wedge it and it provides some traction, unlike the plastic cork, which fell out of its own accord.










We ran out of anti-nausea meds yesterday morning, and the vet is going to see how she does without them. I really hope she will be ok – I hate to think that she’s uncomfortable. And she won’t eat when her stomach is upset. I’m also worried that if she gets nauseous and stops eating, she will have to be put on steroids, and I’m holding out on those as long as possible.

Today was my first day as member of the chondrosarcoma support group, and I got a few emails form people who have it. One was from the mother of a boy who died, and it broke my heart. I’ve been trying to gloss over the bad parts of this, not read stats I don’t like, etc, focus on her ‘cancer buddies’ at the vet. I’ve been told that there’s no change of truly beating this. The vet said that they “can never actually cure cancer” and I’m trying to ignore that. I know if I get down and sad that Honey can sense it, and right now she’s not doing too badly – she sounds like she’s rooting for truffles every time she inhales, but that’s easy enough to laugh at, especially when she’s sticking a ball in my face or licking my ears every five minutes. She also hasn’t had any of the symptoms listed as being hallmarks of this cancer, like nosebleeds and dizziness. It’s really tough to keep the bad news separate from the good, and to focus on the happiness.

On a lighter note, I actually SLEPT last night. Granted, I spelt in our closet (it’s a walk in, chill out, its not that bad) with ear plugs in and I took some benadryl. So maybe I just went into a sensory-depravation coma. Tonight we’re going to cook dinner, drink wine, and play fetch. It’s going to be wonderful. Happy Valentines Day!!

One more thing....

Since it looks like my free time from no until at least the end of February, probably through March as well will involve a whole heck of a lot of sitting at home with Honey, I'm trying to figure out stuff to do to allay the boredom. So far I have compiled this list of stuff to do to stay occupied:

1) alter all the vintage dresses I bought intending to alter
2) try to follow one of those historic patterns I have for turn of the century wear
3) read
4) learn to juggle (honey likes this one – lots of throwing of balls)
5) ???

Problems identified with this list:

1) alterations are incredibly, mind numbingly dull
2) I have no fabric for turn of the century sewing, and doubt very much if the garment would look right if I made it out of old green polka dotted bed sheets.
3) I’ve already read everything in my apartment except the plays / scripts.
4) I can only maintain enthusiasm for this for about 3 minutes at a time.

HELP ME OUT HERE, PEOPLE!!!

1st weekend of radiation treatment

The doggie antinausea pill works wonders - she's eating again :)!!! We had a really good weekend. Saturday we figured out why she’s being so weird about food – apparently at the vet when she’s coming up from the anesthesia, they hand feed her and she now seems to expect the same service at home, thank you. She looks from her bowl to whoever fed her, and back again, but if we walk away she’ll eat. Freakin’ prissy animal wanting to be hand fed. Jeez. So Saturday Cameron had an appointment to get new headshots taken and his photographer has a mastiff (who is beyond sweet) named Beau and a yard and said it would be ok to bring Honey, so the three of us spent a few hours on his yard (which is so incredibly cool I just have no words) and then he took a portrait of Cam and Honey and I. it was weird, I’m not used to being on that side of the camera. And I can honestly say it was the first photo shoot I’ve ever been on that I didn’t have to hold a reflector card or trip the light meter ( I used to LOVE that little popflash, though, and that transistor box looked directly out of ‘back to the future’ – I remember feeling very important when I was asked to press that square red button…). So Honey spent the afternoon laying in the shade next to Beau chewing his ball, then she went with us to a restaurant called Home that has a deck and allows dogs. Its funny, I can tell she’s losing her sense of smell, or it’s at least intermittent. I had salmon and I took the leftovers home and promptly dropped them on the living room floor, and she wouldn’t eat it. It was sad – I know how much she likes fish and she wouldn’t even smell it. That’s got to be a factor in the wanting to be handfed, as well. Poor thing. Saturday night we hung out with our neighbors Max and Maria, with whom Honey is in loooooove. After about 35 minutes, when she had investigated their apartment to her satisfaction, she climbed up on the couch between them, put her head on Maria’s lap and zonked out. She also gave max more kisses than I’ve ever seen her give anyone that wasn’t directly related to me or Cameron.

Saturday night wasn’t so great for sleeping – I think I got around 4 hours, and Sunday we just sat at home, except for a few walks with the neighbor’s dog, a brief foray to the patio out back for a play date and about 4 hours of fetch. It was great. Until I decided to go to bed. Honey is incredibly attached to Cameron – I think she sees him as the great white hunter, and therefore is not entirely at ease until he’s around. This is impressive because she managed to sleep (quite soundly) every night for seven years without Cameron, and has never cared about the location of anyone but him and me at bedtime, as far as I’m aware, but now, if he’s not home when I turn out the lights, we have a problem. Cam closed last night, so he got off around 1 and then went to hang out with some friends. I was totally exhausted and had been battling the urge to go to bed since like 6:30, and around 10 I figured it could turn in. honey had other plans, namely pacing and whining, standing over me and wagging her tail, pacing some more, and standing at the door with her head cocked to one side. This went on until Cameron finally did come home at like 2:30. Needless to say this did not create an environment conducive to sleep. When he did come home she had trouble breathing and I had trouble getting her head in the right position. At one point I decided to sleep on the floor and it almost worked, but my shoulder started flipping out (I’ve broken it twice and if I get cold it will hurt. A lot.) and the last time I looked at the clock it was 6:10. My alarm went off at 7:25. URGH. I was so tired this morning I actually got lost in the train station and wound up coming out at the wrong exit, then I went to Coffee Bean for some espresso and they were training someone, so although I had worked out my order on the way to the shop – “regular latte, two extra shots please” (I even rehearsed it in my head so I wouldn’t get it wrong) they asked me all the follow up questions – do you want flavor? Sugar? Whipped cream? Sprinkles? And I was so out of it I actually got confused.

This morning Honey had another antinausea pill, so hopefully she’ll eat dinner. And Cam said she was happy and bouncy at the vet’s. I’m so grateful she likes the staff, I can’t imagine how awful this would be if her daily trip to get zapped was something that scared her.