Knock Wood for Me, Please

I'm a little nervous about saying it in print, but ...

I had a pretty good day.

I'm not only taking the correct dosage of the important medicine now, I'm also back on the donnatal, at the doctor's suggestion. This means that since about ten this morning, I have had no pain. Let me say that again: no pain. The lack of pain is actually so obvious to me that every five to ten minutes I kind of think "Huh, nothing hurts," and then I smile and go back to what I was doing. I have no idea what the night-time will bring, but this has been really nice.

I even managed to go out and do some things with the girls and not have any kind of emergency the whole time I was out. I'm a little loopy because the donnatal does that, but you know, feeling just a little bit stoned is not the worst thing you can feel, eh?

So I was giving a little more thought to the dog issue, inspired, actually, by Diane, who left me a wonderful comment. I didn't realize that you actually can train little dogs (and big ones, I suppose, but ick) to go in the house on a wee-wee pad or newspaper, if you need them to. It's not a first option, but it's an option for times that I can't get out. And I also realized that depending on the dog I get -- she has an adorable tiny dachshund -- that I could put the dog on a leash and just walk it around the backyard and pick up the stuff right then, and not have to walk all up and down the street in bad weather.

Then I remembered that there is a breed I fell in love with at my cousin's house in Florida a couple of years ago; I probably put a link to it here then, too. The dog is called a Coton du Tulear, which is a totally stupid name. (Here's a link to a breeder's site, but you can get an idea from the pictures and stuff.) The thing is that these dogs have just the temperament I'm looking for. They love to run around the house, but don't care if they get much outside exercise. They bond totally to their people and will stick to you like velcro when you're home. They're good with children. They're very excitable puppies, but mellow down nicely. They have long, cottony fur, but do not shed, although they probably need to be groomed fairly often. They're about the size of a bichon frise, which my cousin has one of as well, and they get along great.

All very, very good. Only drawbacks are that this is probably a pretty expensive dog, and there are probably none anywhere that need rescue or are in shelters. However. Even I, when I got to the part about "the size of a bichon frise", realized that a bichon is probably just fine a dog for me. They are much more common, and it's more likely that I could find one who needs help and a home. They're the perfect size and all, and from those that I've ever spent time with, also very affectionate and cuddly. And if someone were offering a bichon-mix for adoption, that would probably be just fine, too.

So all I need is to stick to the timeline. Get well. Work for three years. Retire. Get that lobotomy for the Hubs. Dog.

Check.


WATCHING TWO AND A HALF MEN :: ENTRY #1667

Hey, Here's a Thought

Maybe if I write my entry at school while I'm still more or less conscious, I can just post it when I get home, and voila: a real entry!

Okay. So I have been working every day last week and this week except I stayed home yesterday to catch up on resting a little. I have good days and I have some less good days, but I think things are about to take a turn for the better, because, as it turns out, I am a moron.

I went to the doctor yesterday afternoon for a regular two-week follow-up visit. The upper G.I. x-ray series I had last week turned out to be good, no sign of Crohn's in the upper part of my digestive system. My bloodwork was mostly good, but I have to go for a follow-up on that today, no problem. The doctor was asking me a variety of questions to see how much I'd improved, and although I have improved, it isn't as much as he'd hoped. And then he looked at the list I'd prepared of all the medications I'm on, and Duh. It seems that although I've been taking the prednisone with obsessive accuracy -- you have to take a certain, and different, number of pills each day; I have a chart -- the other pill he gave me, the one that specifically reduces inflammation in the colon? I was supposed to take two pills four times a day and I've been taking one pill four times a day. IT SAYS TWO PILLS FOUR TIMES A DAY RIGHT ON THE BOTTLE. So, idiot me. Anyway, I started in with the correct dosage as soon as I got home and had dinner, so I'm expecting to see a little more improvement in the coming week. The doctor was very unhappy that this whole thing wakes me up at night, which I don't love either, but it has its pros and cons, but he's hoping the correct dosage will really help settle things down.

I had started eating a more normal diet over the weekend, but it seemed a little too much for my system to take, so I've cut back to more digestible things for now. I put that beautiful piece of red snapper I got the other day into the freezer. I'm back to eating eggs and turkey sandwiches, mostly, and toast. Well, okay. Maybe by next week I can go back to some real food again.

(The Other Chai called me from the faculty room a few minutes ago and asked if I wanted to join her and someone else for lunch at Panera's today. Oy, just the thought makes my stomach hurt! What could I possibly eat there right now? Anyway, I told her that I'm not eating real food yet and I'm just going home for lunch anyway. But thanks.)

They're still giving midterms today, so once again, that's a half day of school, then kids go home. Staff gets an hour for lunch and then comes back for however long the rest of the day last, an hour and a half, I think. But I'm going home for lunch and not coming back, as I did Wednesday. Much better for me not to overdo at this point, I think.

So, on to other things, like how this is changing my life in ways other than physical. I am very much not sweating the small stuff, and practically everything is small stuff. (I have not gained back any of the weight I lost, btw, so I basically dropped about 15 pounds. Trust me, this is not the way anyone would want to do that.) I have come to certain conclusions as well.

Come this summer, I will have to find some way to hire someone to clean my house on a weekly basis. I am sick and tired of living in a dust and debris filled mini-museum. I will take a bit of time to unclutter, and then someone has to come in and dust and do the floors, and so on. I wasn't good about doing it before, and I have no intention whatsoever of using up whatever pain-free time I have on doing it now. I don't know what it will cost, but I'll give something up, if I have to.

The next one is a much tougher goal to achieve. While I was quite sick, I suddenly became aware that once I was well, I would want very much to do something that I have always, always, always wanted to do all my life, but have never been able to. I want to have a dog. I am not giving this much detail thinking yet (aside from what's going to follow here), but when I think now "Yes, I will have a dog someday," it makes me feel wonderful. I think I deserve to have one, and I should have one.

I would certainly wait until I retire. Before then, I won't have the time to devote to training a dog, or maybe even walking it every day. Looking forward to dog-ness as part of retirement is also making me happy, so I know that part of the "plan" is good.

I have two huge concerns. One, as you know because I've written it many times, is the Hubs. He does not like dogs. (He likes cats, of course.) Even so, I think that if I make it clear that I will be retired and this dog will have health benefits for me and such, he will not stand in my way. But there will still be two problems. One is that although he doesn't like dogs, dogs looooove him. If we walk into a room full of people and there is a dog there, the dog instantly gravitates to him and wants to sit on his lap and love him to pieces. Which of course annoys him. So I'm a little afraid that if we get a dog and it is certainly my dog, it will still bond with him and want to intrude on his personal space all the time, which would really not be fair to him. He may accept the fact of a dog in the household, but he won't want to love it, and he shouldn't have to. But the variable of how the dog would feel would be beyond our control.

Next, of course, is my health. If I do have a bad flare, or need to go to the hospital for anything, someone would have to take care of the dog, and it would be someone who has already made it quite clear that he (or she, if you count the kids), is not a dog-lover and has no interest in that sort of responsibility. This is a tough one. If I am in such a condition that I can't get out of bed, someone would still need to walk the dog, and feed it. (I know that the walking-the-dog problem can be partially resolved by fencing in the yard and just letting the dog go out, teaching it to use a particular part of the yard for its business, but that's a big step for the Hubs, too, since the backyard and his gardens there are his domain and his joy. Most of the yard is kind of fenced in by our neighbors' fences, but we'd still have to put in some, and a couple of gates.)

The last question is what kind of dog to get. My ideal dog is about terrier-size, is very mellow, and more-or-less shaggy. Weird, I know. I like the idea of getting a dog from a shelter; that way, if I got a year old or so dog, I'd already know its full size and it would already be housebroken. It would just be hard to know its personality, just seeing a dog in a cage like that. I know that I don't actually want a terrier because they are too feisty for me. I happened to see something about dogs on Nova, I think it was, the other day, quite interesting, and it pointed out that terriers are the way they are because they are hard-wired through years and years of breeding to be, basically, killers. I had never thought about it this way before, but it's true. A terrier is bred to kill rats or other small vermin; they do it quite efficiently, with one good bite and one good shake. So I guess not the dog for me. A big long-haired dog, especially one that requires lots of exercise, is also not the dog for me. A tiny dog, let's say a Yorkie, is very intriguing, but they are first of all too fragile, and second of all, I know that the Hubs is actually repulsed by tiny dogs, so that would be asking for too much. Although I must say that the thought of a pug keeps crossing my mind. Family friends had pugs when I was a kid, so I'm familiar with them, and I like their personalities very much. Not so keen on the slobbering. Anyway, I'd be just as happy with a mixed breed, I'd just want to know what the mix is to get an idea of what the dog would be like. Which is hard to get at a shelter. So I might find myself looking into some kind of poodle mix, because they make very good mixes, and this is so in fashion at the moment that I could probably find something.

So I'm crazy, right? I've got nothing better to do that dream about getting a dog? Hey, it's something to think about during those endless trips back and forth to the bathroom all night. A girl's got to put her mind somewhere.


WATCHING L/O :: ENTRY #1666