Circles of Life

This past  Friday my parents' little dog Beau (sometimes called Boby but mostly "Pootie-Poot") went into emergency surgery for his liver shunt.  Yes, the same thing my Lucky has. Beau is Lucky's little brother, 9 months younger.

Sadly, once the doctors got to his liver, they found that he had multiple shunts, both inside and outside. There was no way to fix it.  So they euthanized him right then and there.  My folks and I were heartbroken.

Now, of course,  I'm even more anxious for Lucky.  He has held out longer than Beau did: stayed healthier for longer. But he has the same family background and until we get the tests on the 23rd, there's no way of guessing if his situation will be any better than Beau's.  Just like Beau, he has a lot of fluid in his abdomen, so an ultrasound will likely be inconclusive. But if Lucky can't be saved, I want to take him home and just love him and pamper him for whatever days he has left. I don't want to put him through the surgery if I'm only going to lose him all the earlier for it. I agonize over this, though there's nothing I can do until we get test results and talk with the doctors at OSU. No amount of worrying will change the outcome.

He wouldn't eat yesterday. Just sniffed tiredly at whatever I put in front of him and turned away. Finally, in desperation at the end of the day, I offered him a bowl of Corn Chex, and he ate those, along with a few bites of fresh peach.  Go figure. At least there's food in his little tummy to give him a modicum of energy to keep fighting. I don't know how much longer he can go on that way, though. And every day that passes that he doesn't eat, his condition gets worse and he gets weaker.

There's also the question of the cost, which my folks tell me is likely to be much more than the $3,000 I was quoted, and which I have less than half raised. My folks paid almost $4,000 for Boby's surgery, and lost him anyway.

It's hard knowing that the answer is probably right there:  he's genetically got a definite date with death, or he doesn't. But I can't know yet. Poor Boby was doomed from the start.  I can only hope Lucky is not.

On a less depressing note:  I'm back in the critter care business. Sunday I spent four hours at Wild Heart, doing whatever I could. I helped to give medicines to the herd of little fawns:  17 of them, I think. Then I got to help bottle feed them, though I'm told their appetites are off lately (hence the medication).  I also cleaned up a LOT of deer diarrhea from the little sick fawns. That was less fun.  But toward the end of the day I got to feed a tiny baby bat, no longer than a finger.  You take a teensy 1cc syringe and get a little bead of milk on the tip:  the bat baby then licks up the bead. Adorable.

I tell myself that if some of these wild animals are able to survive the illness, abandonment, or injury they sustain, surely my little Luck dragon is strong enough for this surgery.  Lord, I hope so.

Flying Solo

On Sunday I dropped my son off at the Tulsa airport and hugged him goodbye for the last time until August 9.  This will be the longest amount of time I've ever been separated from him:  this, my "little boy" who once grew inside my body and now towers four inches over me.  The longest I've ever been apart from him before is four weeks. This will be nine.


I was strangely okay with this. I got a little teary as I was saying goodbye, but as I got back into my car I was already thinking ahead toward my summer flying solo.  I was already taking advantage of the new found freedom:  instead of returning straight home from the airport, I took a half-hour detour up to Foyil, Oklahoma, where I spent a few hours volunteering for Wild Heart Ranch, a wildlife rehabilitator. I scrubbed hawk poop out of cages, refilled supplies, folded laundry, squirted food into a dozen wide-open baby bird mouths from a syringe, and, best of all, I got to feed several tiny baby skunks, just big enough to have their eyes open.  I got home sweaty, tired, with my shirt smeared with hawk poop, but happy, at 10 p.m.


I know I will miss my boy. He is, as I mentioned in an earlier post, always a presence in my life and my home. But this summer feels different. This time is mine.

I'm also working furiously on raising money for Lucky. Our GoFundMe campaign is now up to more than $1,000, which is amazing. I've been really touched by the way my friends and co-workers have come out with support, both emotional and financial. I have even received an offer of a free apartment to stay in while I'm in Stillwater for Lucky's surgery!  One colleague baked and decorated beautiful sugar cookies shaped like shamrocks and dog bones and put them in the breakroom with a donation jar.  They garnered $150!  And at the end of the day yesterday, I received an envelope of cash from an "anonymous donor" that put the fund over the $1,000 mark.


Still, that leaves about $2,000 to be raised, so I've listed several items for sale on Craig's List. These are big items, things I've been hauling around for six years now for one reason or another:  the armoire my X and I bought on our honeymoon that weighs a ton; the ginormous coffee table that was scaled perfectly for the large living room we had before, but looks like an ice rink in my current space; a chest of drawers that belonged to my great grandmother and is the last of a bedroom suit that has long since been broken up and sold off piece by piece by various family members.


I've been attached to these items and have argued with myself that I need them, that I love them. But it feels somehow liberating to put them up for sale now. I crave the empty space in my home, and the opportunity to go through my stuff and decide what warrants space in my reduced storage capacity and what has to go.


Perhaps in the same spirit, I've gone back to the gym. I find I am no longer resigned to the 20 pounds I put on over the past two years.  Hormonal changes made me pack on the weight and depression made me feel helpless to do anything about it.  But I feel stronger these days, and I realize I'm not helpless. It's not impossible to regain the body that feels like me, and I want to get my strength and stamina back.


So I'm doing okay with my looming stretch of solitude. I've got shit to do!

The Fight for Lucky

As I write, our little dog Lucky is at the vet, having had X-rays earlier today.  It's been a while since I mentioned Lucky, but his issues have not gone away and in fact have gotten worse.

After conducting a liver bile acids test, our vet is convinced that Lucky has a liver shunt: that means that the blood vessels that carried blood away from his liver to his mother's liver while he was in utero failed to close after he was born, so his blood is not getting to his liver properly to be cleaned. This is causing pretty much all the problems he has been experiencing:  lowered immune function, protein elimination problems, wasting, the seizures, and now abdominal bloating as fluids leak from the liver and possibly intestines because of the protein imbalance.  (That's why he was getting X-rays.)

It's all very complicated.  The upshot is that  he needs surgery to fix the shunt. The surgery could kill him, as it is long and complicated and he is weak.  But he will certainly die without it, as his condition continues to worsen. It has to be done by a specialist and will cost an estimated $2500 to $3000.

Obviously, that's money I don't have.

Yesterday I started a Go Fund Me campaign to try to raise part of the money.  My Facebook friends have been sweet, and so far we've raised $145.  Not bad for one day.  I'm hoping as friends share with friends we can continue to get that up to at least $500.  I'm going to sell a few things around the house to try to get it up to $1000.

The vet is reluctant to give me a firm timeline, but based on the rate at which Lucky's condition is deteriorating, he said in 4 weeks, Lucks could be beyond help, so we need to get him into surgery as soon as possible, if we want to increase his odds. He gets weaker with every passing day, and the more depleted he becomes, the harder it will be for him to withstand the surgery.

Whatever happens, I tell myself, he has been and continues to be loved.  Whatever happens, he's had more life and a healthier life than he would have without us, because me and my family have been willing to pour money into him to keep his little furry head above water all these months.


But we have had him less than a year.  And he's only a year and a half old.  It's not fair.

I don't want him to die.  I don't want to have to hold him and say goodbye, and I don't want to let that little personality go because I failed him.  But I don't know if I can keep that from happening.  There's a sad little part of my heart that fears Lucky was never meant to be long in this world: that he's had a date with death since the beginning, and I've just barely been keeping it at bay.  But he's also been a trooper, and resilient.  I don't think he's giving up yet, and I'm not giving up on him.