Day 2529

I spent the day asking questions about the various medications the dogs and I take. Dash had an appointment to check his Levothyroxine levels. He's had to take this drug ever since he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and periodically they need to check and see whether the dose needs to be adjusted. While I was at the vet, I asked about the Incurin Dot was taking for urinary incontinence. Do we need to increase the dose on this one, since it doesn't appear to be working anymore? I was surprised to learn that this drug has been on backorder for months and wasn't even currently available. There were alternate drugs we could try, but each had their own drawbacks. Maybe it might be better to just learn to deal with Dot's leaky bladder.

Later in the day I visited my own doctor to get my prescriptions renewed for another year. The doctor wanted me to stop taking Protonix because it had been linked to a higher incidence of stroke in a recent study. It would have been nice if I knew this ten years ago when I started taking the drug. This is the frustrating thing about prescription medicine. Doctors are always learning new things and this year's favorite treatment can always end up being on next year's dangerous substance list. The doctor also said my blood pressure might be too low. Jeez, I've spent years getting my blood pressure under control under the assumption that lower blood pressure is always better. Now doctors are learning that abnormally low blood pressure is often associated with brain atrophy. Yikes. I'd never even heard of brain atrophy before, but there must be an epidemic of it in this country. How else would you explain all the bad decisions we make.

Every time I see my doctor, he tells me that my Cortisol levels are too high and I need to do something to reduce the amount of stress in my life. I try to explain that there really isn't any significant stress in my life, with the possible exception of cleaning up dog poop day in and day out for years at a time. When I explained the daily routine required to care for an incontinent, crippled dog, it appeared to give the doctor stress. He said that when this happened with his dog, he had to put it down. "Well, that's the difference between you and me," I said. Dot is a happy dog. She just can't care for herself anymore.

I think I've gotten all the prescriptions straightened out for another year. Janet only takes a single statin pill every day, but Dot, Dash, and I have dozens of medications to keep track of. At least Dot and Dash don't have to take the chemotherapy pills anymore. There used to be a gas station on every corner. Now there's a CVS Pharmacy or a Walgreens on every corner. How did we live without all these pills? I certainly believe in the benefits of keeping your blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar levels under control, but it sure would be tempting to quit taking all these meds.

I've got a new article to write tomorrow. It looks like there will be some website work as well. I anticipate a quiet day of writing, punctuated every few hours with the smell of fresh poop. I don't think I was cut out to be a caregiver, but I'm actually doing reasonably well for a person with very little empathy. Dot seems happy anyway. I'll work on keeping the stress under control.

Alvin is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2524 - Veteran's Day

I convinced the guys at the hipster restaurant to make me something that wasn't on the menu this morning. This was a small but significant success. If you can't find your world, you've just got to create it. I doubt that I could ever convince the owners to start using real china and silverware, but they probably wouldn't mind if I started bringing my own plate. I like this place. The food is simple, but delicious. The customers aren't irritating. And the coffee is strong. I'm definitely not a hipster myself, but I feel comfortable here.

It's nice to get away now and then. The isolation of my daily life and the dogs changing needs are slowly driving me crazy. Dalmatians are active, energetic dogs. Dot and Dash used to be much calmer when I was able to walk them five or six miles a day. Dot can barely make it around the block now, and Dash is so timid that he doesn't like to walk at all without Dot at his side. Now, Dash stands next to the refrigerator and barks incessantly at the treats we keep hidden on the top. Dot drinks water when she's stressed, but her muscles don't work well anymore, so she takes tiny, tiny little sips. I can stand holding her up at her water bowl for ten of fifteen minutes at a time. I hate to pull her away because I don't want her to get dehydrated. I sure wish she could drink faster though. Everything I do these days is an exercise in patience.

When I went to refill Dash's thyroid medication, they told me that he needs another blood test before the prescription can be renewed. I thought we just did this, but when I looked at my records it turned out that the last test was to check on the effectiveness of his phenobarbital. Now we've got to do the same thing for his Levothyroxine. Fasting Dash for these tests is a major hassle, because this is a dog that lives to eat. Ironically, I'm having exactly the same problems with my own medications. I recently had to make an appointment for more tests before my own doctor would renew my prescriptions. Most of these pills I've been taking for decades and the dosage has never changed. I don't know why my doctor couldn't just write me a prescription that would last forever.

I have never seen so many opinionated people on my Facebook feed. People who normally just post pictures of cute cats are determined to convince their friends that Trump is either going to be great, or that he represents the end of the world as we know it. I see an almost equal number of opinions from either side of the fence. Nobody is really going to change anybody's mind. Most people are just preaching to the choir because of the way Facebook filters your feed. You just see what Facebook thinks you want to see. I don't think this is a good thing. The personalization made possible by technology just creates little echo chambers where friends can reinforce their preconceptions. I don't see much of a desire to actually understand the other side. 

My trash got picked up again today. This makes four weeks in a row. Maybe the government is listening to me after all. Hey, the sky was blue this morning. I had a good breakfast and Dot's condition seems stable for the moment. On this Veteran's Day, I don't think the world is going to end at all.

Dolly is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2296

The landscapers came out today. They think it's funny that I have to replace the grass every year. I think I'm their only customer where they have to do something like this. The turf is always installed properly and I water and feed it properly. The problem is that the roots from the large Oak trees in the back yard suck up all the water and the canopy of leaves blocks out direct sunlight. The yard just doesn't get enough sunlight for St. Augustine grass to thrive. Bermuda Grass needs even more sunlight and won't grow at all. I've planted most of the yard with ground cover that does well in shady areas, but the dogs like to sit out in the grass during the Summer, so we put in a small patch of grass every Spring for them. The yard looks great until August and then it gradually starts to die out. It's not an ideal solution, but it's better than nothing.

I added an SSL Certificate to my website this afternoon. The certificate is probably overkill, since I'm not selling anything on the site and have little need for security. Modern browsers increasingly expect a secure site though, so I guess it was worth the effort. The whole process was a lot more time consuming than I thought it would be. I had to add some code so that people who had already bookmarked the http: version of the site wouldn't get an error message and would go to the new https: version instead. The web hosting folks said that the SSL Certificate would improve my search rankings. I kind of doubt this is true, but we'll see what happens.

It was time to get more Allopurinol and Levothyroxine for Dash today. It seems like I'm always picking up pills for somebody. Dot takes meds to control her blood pressure and chemotherapy drugs to control her cancer. Dash takes Phenobarbital to control seizures, along with his daily thyroid and blood pressure meds. My own prescriptions are mostly to control high blood pressure and cholesterol, although there are a few for other things as well. I can't even remember why I'm taking some of them. There's a whole little area in the kitchen now just for pills. Dot takes her chemotherapy medication every third day, so we never end up taking the pills on the same day. I have to use a calendar to keep track of all this. It gets complicated.

It's ironic that I used to have to use a calendar to keep track of work deadlines. Now, I just use the calendar to keep track of prescriptions. Work is pretty easy to manage these days. When a job comes in, I usually just do it right away because I'm so bored. I haven't had a backlog of work in quite a while.

I finally got the forms working again on the new web server. This was a questionable use of my time, because nobody uses the forms anymore. Typically, they get filled out by spam-bots that randomly type gibberish in each of the form fields. I probably should have eliminated the forms instead of fixing them. They were fantastic in 1995. Now, they're just a nuisance.

Spring is when the Purple Martins return. Unfortunately, it's also when the cockroaches return as well. While I was writing this, I looked down and saw a huge roach sitting on my foot. This startled me and I flinched, flipping the bug up in the air. Lord knows where it landed, because I can't find the disgusting thing now. My office is so full of clutter that the bug could stay hidden for another month. Such is life in the South.

Elliott is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2114

At the rate I'm going, I could probably continue this narrative as a series of Tweets. 140 characters a day would be plenty. Today, I picked up some more Levothyroxine for Dash and went to the gym. That was about it. I read an article recently that said if you want to stay busy in your fifties and sixties, you need to spend your forties building a strong network of contacts and relationships. Oops, my bad. I was still kind of social in my late thirties, but by the time I turned forty, I had already started avoiding people. I stayed busy for a long, long time because almost everybody I knew eventually became a client. The fatal flaw in this plan was that I never knew that many people in the first place and had no desire to meet more. Now, it's become one of those Humpty Dumpty situations. All the king's horses and all the king's men...you know the story.

If I wanted to make contacts, I definitely should have picked a different gym. I'm usually the youngest person working out. The people here are ancient.  I picked this cardiovascular and fitness center because the facilities were fabulous, but forgot that it is run by a major hospital. Most of the members seem to be recovering from heart surgery or cancer and almost everybody has a nurse or personal trainer. Needless to say, I usually have the basketball court all to myself. Usually, I like this somewhat unique situation, but on days where I'm feeling isolated, exercising with a bunch of geezers doesn't really help.

I'm not sure that I even have the capacity to get out and about anymore. Even when I'm at the gym or running small errands, I worry about Dot. After all the time I've spent with her, I'd feel terrible if she ended up spending her final hours alone and scared. Dot knows that I am her legs and she depends on me. I don't know how much time she has left, but I want her remaining days to be happy ones, right up to the very last day. This is why I kind of liked it when work kept me chained to the computer. Dot was always nearby. The work kept me busy. And the money the work generated allowed me to buy enough technology toys that I never had to think about my dwindling circle of friends.

I passed a bookstore on my way to the gym and briefly thought about stopping and picking up some more books to read. That would be too spontaneous though. I'll probably pass this same bookstore three or four times before I actually stop and look for a book. I've passed the new breakfast restaurant a couple of times too, but still haven't gone in and ordered breakfast.

I need to remember to take my car to the dealership tomorrow morning. I'm pretty sure that the suspension problem is real, since the yellow warning light has come on several times now. The car still handles well, but the squeaking noise is kind of ominous. I hope this is a warranty item. Anything that isn't covered by warranty at the Land Rover dealer usually ends up being very expensive. I hope they don't give me an Evoque for a loaner car. It's too hard to load Dot into the small Evoque when we go to our physical therapy sessions. If I'm lucky, they'll give me one of the last remaining LR2s in their loaner fleet.  I learned a long time ago that they'll never lend you a Range Rover.

It's too bad the Pope isn't still around. The messages of hope on TV have already been replaced by politicians accusing each other of being liars. By the time the election actually rolls around, I suspect that everybody will hate all of them.

Sweat Pea is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day