"Let us think the unthinkable, Let us do the undoable, Let us prepare to grapple with ineffable itself, And see if we may not eff it after all." Douglas Adams
In an effort to post more to this site (and not dump interesting stuff I stumble across into yet another proprietary service that will go belly-up eventually), I’m going to try and post more link collections. These post will be under the Links tag.
Today you weren’t there in bed when I reached out to make sure I didn’t sit on you coming back from the bathroom.
Today was the first day you didn’t get up with me in the wee hours when I couldn’t sleep.
Today, I wept in the dark when I smelled you on the blanket on the couch after I’d pulled it up under my chin.
Today was the first day I didn’t take you for a walk.
We had to go out, and didn’t have to close the gate when we returned. We didn’t have to rush home to let you out, a task that was so important these last weeks as your health faded. You weren’t at the door when I unlocked it.
I made dinner and you weren’t under foot. We didn’t have to make up your bowl before we ate. We didn’t have to let you out 3 minutes after we sat down to eat. You didn’t eat the bread we dropped on the floor. You weren’t there to try and steel food from our plates.
In an hour, you won’t be at my feet, reminding me that it’s time for your nightly frozen Kong. You won’t run to that particular spot in the living room, tailing wagging, looking back and forth from where I’m supposed to drop your food and then to my face, anticipation and excitement in your eyes.
Today was the first day in a hollow, still house, a house with a hole I swear was left by a 22-pound dog, but feels like an abyss, crushing my heart.
We loved you so much, maybe more than we should’ve. We still do and there lies so much pain and sorrow. I hope you knew that we were doing everything we could and we ran out of things to do. We told you over and over how much we loved you at the end. I hope you heard us, through sobs and sedatives.
Goodbye Parker. I’m sorry your time was so short. You deserved a long life but a cruel universe took you anyway.
Today I miss my dog. And I always will.
Today, we said goodbye to our dog, Parker. He was 8.
Cancer got him far too soon. We got a little dog thinking he would live longer than a larger one, since we lost our last dog early as well. Coincidentally, also to cancer. Life isn’t fair.
Parker had so much attitude, but was also a lazy little mutt. He looked so much like a Jack Russell our first vet wouldn’t let us leave a visit until we forwarded the DNA test that said he was 25% Poodle, 25% Japanese Chin, and 25% Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. The other quarter was “Various”.
Parker spent most of his life in the pandemic. Which means that he spent a lot of it with me, sitting (or, more accurately, sleeping) behind me, on camera, as Zoom work happened. Dozens of people at work know Parker as my background companion.
Parker was also a fierce defender of the house; no UPS, FedEx, or Amazon delivery went unchallenged. He loved our usual postal delivery person, but bristled at any replacement.
Any little dog, or a black dog with white coloring, was an instant enemy, producing a fierce bark not backed up by his 22 pounds.
But, at his heart, he was a goofball. Playful, as long as you played his game. And more a fan of the sun that us.
We already miss you, buddy.
On April 15 2024, around 5:30 pm, I took out the garbage and recycling, something that required two 15-yard-long round trips from the back of my lot to the curb. The first trip took some effort and left me winded, with a little pain in my chest. At the end of the second trip, I thought I was going to collapse from the pain in my chest. I slowly dragged myself inside, sat in our recliner, and drank some water. I checked my Apple Watch repeatedly, watching my heart rate slowly fall from the mid-130s to just above 100. The pain ebbed as my heart rate dropped, but didn’t stop. Breathing was an effort. Something was clearly wrong.
My partner returned from walking the dog around 10 minutes later to find me in the chair, looked at me and said “are you ok?” Until that question, I’d been negotiating internally, talking myself out of the obvious, sure that things would work themselves out. But as I looked back at her, I heard the words come out of my mouth and I knew that I both wanted to say them and that life had changed. “We need to go to the hospital.”
4 hours later, I was in an ICU room at University of Michigan Hospital recovering from surgery. Dr Sukul, who had clearly been on his way home, had been pulled back to save my life. He put a 48mm-long stent in my left anterior descending artery, removing and re-opening a 90+% blockage. I’ve seen the video of him working. I lost 40% of the function of the lower chamber of my heart, likely permanently.
I’d had a STEMI, an ST-elevation myocardial infarction, a fairly dangerous type of heart attack. It’s not the widow maker, but it’s close enough.
A lifetime of poot diet, alcohol, and sitting on my ass had caught up with me. I’d been given a renewal of my lease on life, through nothing more than the happenstance of living near enough to one of the premier medical institutions in the world. Not that many years ago, I may not have survived due to a lack of facilities; I had hours to live.
And so, today, I sit at the same desk, the same computer, typing with the same fingers I stared at in an ER triage bay as an RN asked me what my advance directives were. I have completed cardiac therapy, joined a gym (and actually go), changed my diet, and lost 35-ish pounds. My PCP shows me numbers that fit into ranges that people like. I have smaller clothes. I lift weights. I can run for two and a half minutes, 5 times, in a half hour.
I’m “healthy”.
I’m still here.
I’m lucky, something that, in retrospect, I’ve always felt. But only in retrospect. I can never go into a situation feeling luck is on my side. Only in hindsight do I think “oh, wow, that was lucky.”
I don’t have great insights from the experience, only lessons I have to live with forever. I have drugs (sorry “medications”), tests, and a growing hate for push notifications from apps that track appointments and tests and meals and blood sugar and blood pressure and dosages and… yeah
But I’m here. I’m glad to be here. The alternative isn’t attractive.
Yet…
I wait for the other shoe to drop every day. I don’t know that there is one, but now I wait. I have a family history that is not great. No one seems to think it matters. Tests say I don’t have genetic markers. Other things aren’t genetically inherited.
Yet..
Again, I don’t have lessons to impart here. Be thankful for the time you have. Tell the people you care about, no matter how platonic they are, how you feel. My near-miss was arterial plaque. It could have easily been an F350 driven by someone on their phone.
I’m not dead. Not yet. I’m still here.
“If you can’t be a good example, then you’ll just have to be a horrible warning.”
― Catherine Aird