Cat's out of the bag. This is why we're moving to Silicon Valley. Hooray!

OK, not that we're all not sick to fucking death of hearing about this... But Dana at Bobofett wrote something really moving about her sister-in-law Tina's death following a situation that was very similar to that of Terri Schiavo, but whose family made a different choice about her situation.

Dana's story of how her family let Tina go makes what the Schindlers have been saying and doing in regard to their daughter seem all the more horrid and heartbreaking and almost obscene. Terri's become some meat marionette, her parents pulling strings and saying "Look how alive she still is! Someday she'll dance on her own again!" Dana's in-laws, on the other hand, honored their loved one the best way they could by not suffering what was left of her to linger because they couldn't face the reality of her loss. If only Terri's parents had as much of a handle on the difference between hope and delusion... For their own sakes as much as any other reason, so that they could find closure and move on with their lives and remember their daughter as the person she was instead of the wretched, sad shadow of herself that's been suffered to persist in the past 15 years. Clearly, their love for her is immense - but in weaving this desperate myth of her potential for recovery, it's also taken on tones of delusion and obsession.

Dickwitted Senator Rick Santorum (and don't even get me started on why Congress should be a million miles from even touching this issue) described Terri's condition as being "close to the equivalent of someone with cerebral palsy", and to that I offer up a hearty "FUCK YOU!". Granted, CP is also a condition whereby a brain has non-functional portions, and Terri's physical appearance may in some ways mimic the symptoms of someone with CP... But a critical, categorical difference exists between her and someone like my own brother-in-law Mickey, who lives with severe CP. Mickey is an intelligent, personable, funny and vibrant person who has a a full and busy life despite his physical limitations. His corporeal existence is only a small part of who he is as a person. With Terri, on the other hand, her most basic physical existence is all that's left of her. There's no person in there. That anyone would dare to compare Terri with someone like Mickey for whatever reason is manipulative and infuriating.

What would Terri think, do you suppose, if her former self could see these pictures we see - this young woman whose obsession with being thin and pretty apparently led to her collapse, now a slack-jawed, middle-aged wraith in a granny gown, her father flashing carnival lights into her eyes to try to connect with her, and her mother still interpreting every vestigal twitch and groan Terri's lizard-level brain stem disgorges into her nervous system as a sure sign that her daughter's in there somewhere, fighting to come out? How horrified she'd surely be. How much she'd probably want to plead with her parents to let her go, and preserve her in their memories instead of in vacated, useless flesh.

The most terrible thing a person could be asked to do, I think, is make a decision about whether someone they love should live or die. Bill and I believed that we'd be up against that choice with our dog earlier this week, and... y'know, she's a dog, but it still tore us up. I can't imagine having to make a similar decision with a person. I empathize with her family and their anguish. Still, I would like to think that, given a fairly irrefutable set of facts such as a cerebral cortex that's turned into a lake of useless goo, I could make the choice to let someone go rather than force them to exist for years in an undead limbo, a horrible degraded mockery of who they were.

Here's hoping the shell of poor Terri gets some rest soon.

So we brought Indy home Monday evening; the vet said that her falling over in the yard (the event that precipitated the Karo syrup dispensing) wasn't from insulin shock, because even after her insulin shots, her glucose levels are in the 400's ("normal" is 80 to 200); she went back to talking about wanting to do an X-ray to determine if maybe there was an intestinal blockage that made her faint from unsuccessfully trying to lay some cable in the yard. We caved in.

The vet had been pushing for X-rays from the start - the start being two weeks ago when she'd prescribed Indy antibiotics because she thought she might have a bacterial lung infection - never mind that she heard no lung congestion and I repeatedly told her that the main symptoms were excessive drinking, weight loss and no appetite loss or pain in her insides. Hell, I knew she probably had diabetes even then, just based on the symptoms; but I didn't push for a blood panel on the first visit, and I feel bad for that - I just figured the vet knew what she was doing (buh). After a week with no improvement, the vet finally suggested blood work, and lo and behold... Insane glucose levels.

I'm really disappointed with this vet. She's fresh out of school, and I swear the only reason she really wanted an X-ray is because that's what she's used to using as a diagnostic aid and she doesn't have enough experience just to use common sense in interpreting a sick dog's symptoms. I know that veterinary science can be even more challenging than human medical science because the patient can't tell you what's going on with them... but still, I was diagnosing the dog with more accuracy than she was.

Anyway, the X-ray revealed no mass, no blockages - just some bad arthritis in her hips and spine and a VERY full bladder. Basically, Indy had declined into an advanced stage of diabetes where something called ketoacidosis develops - basically, her body has lost the ability to use sugar due to the insulin deficit, and is burning body fat for energy almost exclusively. By-products of massive fat metabolism include ketone acids, which eventually cause acidic toxicity of the blood and severe metabolic problems. The toxicity causes nerve malfunction in her hind legs, making them weak - which is why she's had trouble squatting to pee/poo. (Given how fast she declined, one wonders whether she would even have gone into ketoacidosis if the vet had diagnosed her correctly the first time and she'd had an extra week of insulin therapy? Guess we'll never know...) When we brought her home, she was so weak that we had to use a towel sling around her belly to help hold her up while she went potty. I'm amazed that Indy, who is generally skittish about even being watched while she's pooping, let us do this - but clearly she was at the point where she was willing to suffer a little humiliation for the cause.

This, obviously, was not a viable situation for the long-term. Bill and I spent an anguished Monday night pondering the pup's prognosis. We didn't want to suffer her to live so dependently, nor to prolong her suffering if she wasn't going to get any better. Bill slept (or rather, didn't sleep) downstairs that night, getting up several times to help her go; in the morning, I basically went in to work for a couple of hours, grabbed some paperwork and went home. To my boss' credit, he was really supportive and didn't give me crap over it... Maybe because between lack of sleep and crying, my face was a swollen pasty nightmare.

Happily, though, over the course of the day Indy began showing signs of improvement - she got to where she could get up by herself and walk outside, could pee without help and only needed a little help balancing for #2. By the evening, she was getting up to mooch at dinnertime (OK, so I slipped her a few slivers of salmon - I mean, who wouldn't?) and just generally seemed more like herself. She's eating (and pooing) like a champion. Bill camped out downstairs again with her while I slept upstairs - but at 1:30 am, I woke up and damned if that pup hadn't hitched herself up the stairs to sleep in her normal bed. God knows how long it took her to get all the way up there, but that's when I knew that she's definitely on the road to recovery.

She may never be as spry as she was, especially because of her arthritis; but if she can just be independent enough to get around and relieve herself without trouble, we have no problem dealing with a high-maintenance food and drug schedule for her. She's not out of the woods, but we're definitely seeing signs of clearing up ahead. Keep her in your good thoughts, please!

This morning we took Indy into the vet's so that they can monitor her glucose levels throughout the day and get her insulin requirements sorted out. She seemed perkier this morning, actually ate a whole can of dog food (not the prescription stuff, which she's not enthused about, but a can of wet Pedigree - the vets said just give her whatever she'd eat), and kept it down even when we drove her to the vet's - but she wouldn't get out of the car and had to be carried into the vet's. I don't know if that's because she was weak or just immensely opposed to going back into the Bad Place - probably both. She hasn't really kept down a lot of food the past couple of days, beyond the fact that her body has been in starvation mode for the past two weeks, but if we can just get her body chemistry sorted out, I'm sure she'll be better.

Seeing Bill carrying her in and listening to her groan and whine, I lost it a little in the vet's office and have been weepy off and on at work since then. I only got a couple hours' sleep, though, so that's part of it too, I'm sure. Bill's not in much better shape sleep-wise, and had to go into work although he was supposed to have today off, so we're both kind of strung out today.

Hopefully, though, Indy just needs to be monitored and have her dosage calibrated. She's a very sick dog right now, and we certainly aren't going to make her suffer any more than she has to, but we're going to do whatever we can to make her well if possible.

Think good thoughts for Indy today, please.

After a hard day of throwing dirt-encrusted shit into a big metal box, nothing beats a quiet evening prying your insulin-shocked pooch's clenched fangs open so that you can squirt a couple turkey baster-loads of Karo syrup down her throat, followed by a brisk stroll out into the cool night air to scoop up some huge, wet piles of her kibble vomit. Good times!

So it turns out that the reason thatIndy has been losing so much weight, drinking water like she's on fire, and generally been an unhappy pooch is because she has diabetes. Poor girl.

Poor owners, too, because it sounds like we'll have to give her insulin shots TWICE a day for the rest of her life. There are very few things that I can remember to even do once a day on a regular basis, let alone twice, so this should be an interesting task to undertake.

A coworker asked me if we were going to put her to sleep because of the diabetes. I just blinked at her in amazement for a couple of seconds. Why the hell would I even consider that, if it's something that's managable and she can still have a good quality of life? Sure, it'll be a pain in the ass to do the insulin, and might be kind of expensive... But this is the sort of thing you have to be prepared to do for those you love. I read a quote once about life priorities that said, "If it doesn't breathe, it doesn't really matter." Indy breathes; she feels; she matters.

We adopted Indy 9 years ago when she was 6 weeks old, just 6 months before we got married - she's a charter member of our family unit. She's just the best dog we ever could have hoped for. She's so smart, and emotionally vivid, and loyal and funny and obedient... All told, the epitome of a Good Girl. We love her like any other family member. She's certainly less difficult to love than many people are, and gives back more in return than most. She protects our house, she makes us laugh, she understands when we're in bad moods and need space, but she never holds a grudge and is always happy just to be close to us. Also, she's the Supermodel of the dog world. She's our Pooch Garou, our Indy-Gatta-Da-Vida, our Pup D'Amour.

Of course we'll take care of her, as long as she can still have a good life. She's our girl.

When I spread toppings on bread or bread-like surfaces, I have a really, really hard time stopping before I've verified that every square centimeter of the surface is thoroughly and evenly covered. I was eating dinner at a friend's house for the first time when her father said, to my startled chagrin, "I see Tracy makes a career out of buttering her bread." I'd never noticed before he said that, but he was right; and now I'm a little wincey when people comment on it.

Even more people have commented on another of my manual-task quirks, which is that while I write with my right hand, I curl my hand over what I'm writing, the same way a leftie does. Thom swears up and down that this has some connection to his memory of seeing me writing left-handed when I was a preschooler, and correcting me. However, no one else in the family seems to recall this, even though he was the next youngest and therefore presumably the least involved in teaching me to write - so if others also corrected me from writing with my left, why can't they remember doing it? Odd. Yet, I do brush my teeth, iron clothes and shoot my .22 better with my left hand. I can write with it on a 3rd-grade level or so.

Still, I don't see how this would explain why I'd end up writing like a leftie with the right. I assume a left-hander does that to keep their hand from smudging the ink. However, my writing that way actually makes me smudge more than most other righters. It just seems so much more relaxed, though. The regular way makes my fingers feel all cramped up and tight; with my way, the pen nests in the crook of my index finger, resting against the end knuckle of my middle finger (which is why I have a weird callus there that most people don't have. Although that's actually not the most strangely-located callus I've known of - my cycling-obsessed college boyfriend, for instance... well. Never mind.). My thumb lays flat on the other side, holding it in place. It's comfy.

So I just now went and Googled "handwriting position", and there's a term for this style - inverted handwriting. We write from the top of the line down, whereas regular writers write from the bottom up. Researchers say it's a possible sign of "unusual brain organization". Somehow I don't find this notion particularly surprising. Unusual brain organization might be a great excuse, for instance, for why I'm pretty much incapable of sending people birthday cards on time. (And yet, I somehow became a manufacturing buyer, a job where the overriding purpose is timely delivery. Buh?)

Lately, though, my usual style of writing hasn't felt quite right. I keep shifting the pen around in my hand, but it just doesn't seem to fit the way it used to. I've even - *gasp* - caught myself writing the crampy way a couple of times. Maybe my hand is going through a mid-life crisis? Next thing I know, it might start demanding that I buy it a pinky ring, or airbrushed acrylic nails with rhinestone appliques. It might take up juggling, or start surreptitiously flipping people off when I'm standing in line at the grocery store. Clearly I'm going to have to monitor this situation.

Tess gave notice at work Monday, do-dah, doo-dah
April 1st she's on her way, out the Big R's door...

Yahoo!