Day 4284

I said goodby to Florida today. I wouldn't want to live there, but I love visiting the Space Coast. I'm starting to feel like a local in Titusville. This sleepy little town has a lot of charm. Almost everyone has some sort of connection to Kennedy Space Center. Many people who worked on the Apollo program retired there. I've met people who worked on the giant F1 engines on the Saturn 5. I met someone this week that was a seamstress who worked on Thermal Protection Systems for the Space Shuttle. My server at breakfast this morning told me that her mother used to work for NASA, replacing broken and damaged heat shield tiles on the shuttle. "She was the smallest person on the team, so her responsibility was to replace the tiles in difficult and hard to reach places," the server told me.

I seldom watch television when I travel. I don't even turn on the radio in the rental car. If a hurricane was headed our way, someone would tell me. Nobody talks about politics though. If I meet an older person, we reminisce about the past. I've learned a lot about the Apollo program from Titusville residents. If I'm talking to someone younger, we speculate about what's going to happen next. A lot of conversations involve Elon Musk. I don't really do that much talking. Just more than I do in Dallas. 

One thing I've noticed while traveling is that most people can't handle silence. They are constantly on their phones, texting friends, listening to music, and staying connected through social media. Even out at the Press Site yesterday, a lot of people spent more time looking at their phones than at all the amazing things surrounding us. People feel deprived and get fidgety when they can't use their phones on the plane. I'm convinced that addiction to personal electronic devices is a disease that's right up there with alcoholism and drug abuse.

You don't realize how grossly overweight Americans are until you spend an hour walking back and forth in an airport trying to get your 10,000 Fitbit steps. Do these people even realize that their weight is a much bigger danger to their overall health than the threat of Covid? Weight and diet are intrinsically linked. Nobody eats healthy food either. There's a huge food court at the Orlando airport and the longest lines are always at the unhealthiest places. Even pilots and doctors eat at McDonalds. There are birds flying around inside the Orlando airport. I can't tell if they are a design feature or a nuisance. Some of the birds have a pretty song, but birds poop a lot and their favorite place is the food court.

Some observations about Florida: it's a lot like Texas but with alligators. In both places if someone passes you going twice the speed limit, it is almost always a huge pickup truck with a lift kit and gigantic tires. Florida has road signs that advise you to slow down for snakes. It is so humid that your skin never feels dry. It seems to rain every single day in Titusville, but usually only for a few minutes at a time. Roads are always under construction in Florida. When the work is finished, things are usually even more confusing than they were before. On the plus side, Titusville has some great local craft beers and the nearby National Seashore is a treasure.

By the time I got on the plane this afternoon I was ready to return home. Have you noticed that every airport has their own TSA rules these days. Some still make you take off your shoes. Others don't. Going to Florida I could leave my laptop in my bag. Returning to Texas, I had to take it out and place it in a separate tray to be scanned. There seem to be different rules about liquids everywhere. I can leave my watch on my wrist in some airports, but most still make you remove anything even resembling metal. It's confusing to say the least. 

Dawn was friendlier to me when I returned home this time. We'll see if she will take a walk tomorrow morning.

Phantom is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 1682

Dot is finally home again. After spending an entire week in intensive care being poked with needles, hooked up to IV tubes, and being cut open by a surgeon, I think she is very glad to be back on familiar turf. The cancer center officially released Dot late this afternoon, sending her home with a big sack of meds, and special instructions on how to care for her for the next few days. She still isn't eating well, but her doctors thought that being back in familiar surroundings would encourage her to resume eating normally. So far, the plan seems to be working. Within two hours after returning home Dot ate a small can of Hills A/D Critical Care. I'm glad she seems to tolerate this special prescription diet, because as much as dogs would prefer cheeseburgers, bacon and fried chicken to help them get well, people food just isn't a good long term solution.

Dot has been through a lot this week and is very tired. After eating her small special dinner and surveying the house and yard to make sure everything was still there, she settled in on top of a soft pile of her favorite blankets in the living room and went to sleep. We'll go back to the cancer center on Saturday to get her surgical bandages removed and then two weeks later to get her stitches out. I'm hoping that is all we'll need to go back for. Assuming that everything goes well with her convalescence, the next major milestone will be getting the pathology report on the tumor that was removed. If the growth is not malignant, all Dot needs to do is continue her recovery and get healthy again. If the growth turns out to be cancerous, we'll have to come up with a plan of action. That can be dealt with later. Right now, the important thing is recovering from some very major surgery. We'll take things one day at a time.

While Dot was being evaluated by her doctors this afternoon, I paid a visit to my own doctors. They wanted to do another series of tests to determine if my Hepatitis C treatment was still working as expected. I keep waiting for a final thumbs up from these guys, but it appears I may never get one. When I asked whether the disease ever returns after this type of treatment, my doctor essentially said that nobody knows yet. I was among the first large scale group of people in the world to receive the new Sovaldi drug and there are no historical records to compare. I am one of the test cases that will ultimately determine whether Sovaldi works as well long-term as it does during the initial treatment phase. So far, the drug appears to be a home run. "You were real lucky to be included in this first batch of patients," my doctor told me. "Insurance companies are starting to deny coverage already because of the high price, and there is talk of reserving the drug for the most serious cases." Rationing a drug that actually works exactly as promised seems like a stupid idea to me, but I wouldn't be surprised if this is what the government decides to do. Why would you want to ration a pill that costs a small fraction of the price of a liver transplant and has none of the rejection issues or transplant side effects? At any rate, I'm glad I got approved for treatment before Sovaldi got on the evening news as the world's most expensive pill. Insurance companies hate it now.

I won't be going out to my breakfast restaurant tomorrow. We have a new schedule now. I'll walk Dash very early in the morning, while Janet is still home and getting ready for work. We want to make sure that one of us is there to watch over her at all times. We'll see how tomorrow goes. So far, Dot seems to be improving a little bit every day. Today was a very good day.

Molly is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 1677

We had to make some tough decisions today. When we returned to the animal emergency clinic early this morning to check on Dot, it was clear that she wanted to go home. It was equally clear that her condition was becoming worse. Her temperature was still normal, but she refused to eat anything during the night and was having trouble controlling her bladder. When we took her outside to see if we could get her to pee normally, she headed straight for the car. We wanted to take her home as much as she wanted to go, but we had an appointment with an internal medicine specialist first.

The doctors at the emergency clinic had arranged the appointment with the specialist for us during the night and luckily it was right next door, at the cancer center where we have been taking Dash. The doctor we saw was very good. She did new blood work and told us that with the exception of the severe infection that was making Dot so sick, her basic vital signs were good. She also agreed with us that it was important to get Dot home to eliminate the stress and depression that was probably making her condition even worse. She thought that if we could get Dot to eat anything at all without vomiting, we could take her home for the weekend. Dot could have hamburger, boiled chicken, rice, anything she wanted. She prescribed some new antibiotics, anti-nausea drugs, and pain medication that she thought would be more effective. She explained that Dot's incontinence was caused by being pumped up with fluids and she should begin urinating normally again after she was off the IV fluids for a while.

When we asked about danger signs to look out for, she told us that the biggest near-term danger was if she became dehydrated or started vomiting. If she started vomiting, we were to get her back to the emergency clinic immediately. The doctor prepared a package of medication to get Dot through the weekend until we could bring her in for an ultrasound test on Monday morning. We really thought we were finally going home. The nurse gave Dot an anti-nausia pill in a little meatball for the car ride home. As we were walking through the lobby on our way to the car, Dot vomited. She wasn't even able to keep the small amount of food she had just taken down for a minute.

When Dot vomited in the lobby, the doctor's tone changed immediately. She said this was a potentially life threatening situation and that Dot needed to go back on fluids immediately. She recommended that Dot be kept under observation during the weekend or we might lose her. We had two choices. It was a Saturday and the cancer center closed to the public at noon. We could leave her under 24-hour supervision at the cancer center, but we wouldn't be able to visit her at all during the weekend. Alternately, we could take her back to the emergency clinic next door, where we could visit or even take her home if her condition improved. If we did this, we wouldn't have access to the veterinary specialists and comprehensive support that the cancer center provided until Monday. It was a really tough choice. If we left her at the cancer center, we couldn't even call in to check on her condition until early Monday morning. They said that if her condition deteriorated, they would call us. This was harsh, but I understood why they had this policy. The cancer center routinely deals with the sickest of the sick. All these pets owners are just as worried as we are. The doctor told us that if their overnight emergency team accepted inbound calls, and had to answer constant questions from worried owners, they wouldn't be able to provide the dedicated level of of care that their patients required. I appreciated their honesty. These were people who were more interested in keeping Dot alive than they were with customer relations.

We could do whatever we wanted, but if we left Dot at the cancer center with the specialists, we had to trust them. I brought in a blanket from the car and we sat with Dot for what seemed like the longest time on the lobby floor. I was very sad. I knew Dot wanted to go home. I also knew that these doctors saved Dash's life. They are amazing. We finally decided to leave her at the cancer center over the weekend, even though there is a small possibility that we will never see her again.

I have to remember that Dot's basic vital signs are good. These doctors are the very, very good. I have seen how quickly a dog can die if help is not nearby. If she was at home over the weekend and we had to get her back to an emergency vet in a hurry, there's a good chance we wouldn't make it.

It's going to be a very long and very lonely weekend. I know that Dot is not ready to die. If anyone can save her, she's in the right place. Please keep her in your thoughts this weekend.

Jade is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 1535

Dash is back home again. After all he's been through this week, he's acting amazingly normal. Too normal perhaps. When the cancer center released him late this afternoon, the doctors gave us a predicable speech about things dogs should never do right after surgery. They shouldn't jump up on the kitchen counters. They shouldn't race around the back yard like a maniac. They shouldn't hop up on the bed or the furniture. They shouldn't shake their head violently like dogs typically do when they get wet. As you might expect, it didn't take Dash ten minutes to violate all these rules once we had returned home again. He's a Dalmatian, after all. I have to keep him on a leash, even in the back yard, for the next several days. Even restrained on a leash with his special new harness, it didn't take Dash two minutes to find a dead bird in our backyard.

One of the hardest things in the days ahead will be keeping Dash from scratching at his incision with his hind legs. The surgeon did such a good job of sewing him up again, that it's hard to tell that Dash has a long incision running the length of his neck. We can't use the cone of shame, or other common way of protecting the neck, because it would rub against the incision. He's not supposed to have anything touching his neck while the wound heals. Luckily, he's not one of those dogs that is obsessed with pulling his stitches out. If I watch him carefully, I think everything will be OK.

We should have the pathology report within the next five days, and that will determine what happens next. For now, it's just nice to have our little guy back home again. I won't be going out to the breakfast restaurant tomorrow morning. I won't be going anywhere actually. Janet and I will coordinate our schedules so that one of us is home at all times. This essentially means that I will be housebound for a while. It's not that big a deal. This is more or less how I live anyway.

I got a jury summons in the mail today. It's a nuisance getting selected for jury duty. I never get picked to sit on a panel, but I've got to go downtown and spend the day sitting in the jury pool room anyway. Lawyers just don't seem to want me on their juries. I would think that after years of sitting in the jury pool room reading old magazines, I would become exempt from jury duty at some point. That's not how the system works though. You never know. One of these days, some lawyer just might want an unpredictable, opinionated writer on their jury.

Tomorrow will be so busy that I probably won't even notice not leaving the house. There's still lots of work to do. The tree trimmers are coming tomorrow too. Ordinarily, something like this might upset the dogs, but Dot doesn't hear too well anymore and she'll probably sleep through the whole thing. Dash was never bothered by workmen in the yard anyway.

Dash should get a little better with each passing day. FedEx delivered a brand new supply of Hepatitis-C pills this morning. There's food in the refrigerator and plenty of work to keep me busy. Life is good.

Princess is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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