Day 1562

Don't ever let me apply for a job on a haz-mat crew. I hate dealing with hazardous substances. Every time I have to don the purple rubber gloves and go through the elaborate clean up procedures to give Dash his chemotherapy pills, I expect something dire to happen. Logically, I think the warnings are ridiculous overkill, but I follow them anyway. I'm superstitious. Why are these pills so dangerous? I understand why you wouldn't want to break the pills apart or crush them to sprinkle on food, but they have a wax coating like most pills. Wouldn't this coating make the pills safe to touch? I don't get it. And if the pills come with such extensive warnings, why wouldn't the doctors just want to give them to the dogs while they were at the clinic?

Like I said, I'm superstitious though, so I take the extra time to do every single silly safety procedure. Since the primary adverse side effect of the chemo pills is anemia and the primary adverse side effect of my own Hepatitis C pills is also anemia, I definitely don't want a case of double anemia. Luckily, my own reluctance to administer the pills is the only side effect we are seeing so far. Dash is handling his treatment much better than I ever expected. He actually seems to look forward to going to the cancer center. He shows no adverse effects from being anesthetized every two days for the radiation treatments. He still has lots of energy. And as we near the end of week two, the dreaded chemo pills don't appear to be bothering him either.

It was a very busy day, although at the end of the day, it didn't seem like I'd accomplished much. There were still lingering website problems to resolve stemming from some incorrect DNS settings that took several sites down overnight. There were some tax issues to resolve with my accountant. There were dogs to transport. Photos to retouch in Photoshop. And since it rained today, a car to wash. I don't know why I waste so much time keeping my car clean. It's kind of a thankless job, since the dogs continually get the inside muddy and the rain gets the outside even muddier. The car is still one small thing I have complete control over though. I can impose order on it, so I do. I wish I could impose the same rigid order on the rest of my life, but I can't. When it's John vs. the world, the world usually wins.

When I was trying to resolve my client's website problems this morning, I realized that even in a world where everyone is using the same Wordpress template, it's still good to have coding skills. After getting nowhere talking to tech support for half an hour, I finally realized that the only way to get the outcome I wanted was to re-write some code myself and bypass the new restrictions the hosting company had placed on the site. I don't know how long the patch will work, but it works now.

Tomorrow, Dot gets to be the center of attention again. I've had to skip her acupuncture and water therapy sessions for several weeks, due to Dash's cancer treatments, but I was finally able to get her rescheduled on a day where Dash rests. Since her physical therapy is obviously helping her, I'd really hate to abandon it at this point. Hopefully it won't rain again tomorrow. I'd hate to wash my car two days in a row.
 

Bubba is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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