My nephew to the rescue

I do know better.

One hot day last week at lunch, Mom and I walked Fame around the block. I was wearing a black T-shirt.

Neither of those may have been the smartest plan but are not the thing that I know better than to do.

I like summer and the heat. Black T-shirts are OK.

No, what I know not to do is stare at Fame instead of where I am going.

But I did.

Which is how I wound up going off the  sidewalk at the house and a wheel and a half into the garden. I was stuck.

No one was home, but my nephew drove up and began helping. 

He was soon aided by a masked construction worker from a nearby site.

They and Dad got me freed, and the construction worker quickly left, leading me to wonder, “Who was that masked man?”

I soon saw my nephew delivering a cooler of cold Gatorade to some utility workers on my street.

A few days later, I saw my nephew out cutting our grass, and I had a thought about why he’s so awesome and so unlike me. He seems so comfortable being who he is.

As someone who’d change almost everything about himself, I am jealous.

The worst?

 Friedreich’s ataxia saddles you with an awful lot of crap, so I hesitate to declare something “the worst.” 

But hearing groups of loved ones laughing uproariously and not having a clue why, or even just talking and not knowing what they’re saying, is pretty bad. I guess something could be worse — not having those loved ones, maybe.

You feel so miserable for what you’re missing, but you don’t want to show that misery because you don’t want your loved ones to feel bad. I fail at this.

My hearing aids are not too helpful. Neither are captioning tools I own.

You are there but not there, enjoying your people being around but missing much.

Fame is full of sh ... really

 Fame had a bad week, which means I did, too, and it isn't over.

Over the summer she had two incidents of vomiting, nothing bad, just unexplainable. The vet and I figured it was something like she ate a cicada. 

But last weekend, she started spitting up water, again not a lot, just once every day. I talked to the vet Monday and I brought her in Tuesday morning for a battery of tests. 

The blood work was all good. The X-rays, though, showed that she was very backed up which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me because she poops, usually twice a day, always once. 

They gave her an enema and suggested I give her Miralax.

I have heard of dogs and owners looking alike, not sharing conditions and medicine, although I have used her shampoo, which in my defense is a human one. 

The enema seemed to irritate her anus; she dripped blood that evening, nothing bad but we went back on Wednesday. They cleaned her up, put her on antibiotics and gave her some fluid. 

Also, we made an appointment to get ultrasounds of her stomach the next day. 

The ultrasounds showed a thickening of areas of the stomach and small intestine. The vet said that could be irritable bowel, which is what she thinks it is, or it could be a tumor. 

We are planning a needle biopsy this coming Friday to find out which.

So I will worry till then.