3-26-09 – Gypsy… Grace off to possible major surgery – we’re a wreck

Its patch changing day so I dont know how sensical this is gonna be since the late afternoon/evening/nite/morning of patch day is always full of pain and sickness beyond what we deal with daily anyway at best.  like, for instance this time, we’ve been in pain/sick hell since late afternoon yesterday – so the opiate patch only works 2 days on us instead of the 3 its supposed to.  then  its still aabot an hour and then it takes a while to take effect.  we know the dose needs raised or something,b ut we’re in our trying to deal with the overwhelming fear of docs and getting back into the swing of going thru medical shit and experimentation til another pain reigmen cocktail that works is found.

We just sent Gracie (our year old labradoodle) off to possible surgery for what the vets think is a torn ACL in her back leg.  After Annie (our 1st labradoodle, adored by all, who died at age 2 within weeks of being diagnosed with being ate up with cancer of the heart and lungs – when ALL her chest x-rays were CLEAR totally just months before when she got sterilized so figure that one out), we’re like a total basket case.

Grace seems to have recovered from her injury I think about a month ago now? remarkably tho.  We even took a chance and took her and Lucy to the dog park the other day.   

* 

Lucy is  Jess’ boxer we got her for Xmas cause she was begging for her own dog, and her previous dog was a mastiff mix – which was obviously outta the question for us to have here in the house with us now altho some here have always desperately wanted a mastiff.  But when we tried to go down the road again of possibly getting a mastiff for Hom our kids just went nuts outta fear that it’d accidentally hurt us since we so weak and shit now that we can be knocked over by a feather – so we got Lucy for Hom instead since boxers are in the mastiff fam – just like a very small version.  

Luce-Anne is wonderful, and everybody adores her.  One of our girls is now obsessed with wanting a boxer now.  In fact, everyone who meets Lucy was HER – she’s so totally like a huge success – and Jess (well all us)  dote on that dog.  she’s so ubberspoiled – but then all our dogs always are.   

The other day, one of the _ _ _ _ _ _ observed “Jess treats Lucy like she’s a dog toy”.  It was hilarious but true.  She all dresses her up all the time and shit – and she goes to doggy school – and she’s got a gigantic toy box. 

Our Mutt and Jeff (Grace and Lucy) are such a joy and so funny.  Gracie (still a pup too remember) and Lucy (now about 5 months old) just fill the house… and yard.  Grace takes everything out – in to her “domain: – the back yard, while Lucy brings everything in – her fave of all being sticks so gigantic that we’ll be like how the hell did you get that thru the dog door?  lol   they’re a mess

Anyway Jess is gonna try to make a show we can publish of Grace and Lucy’s 1st trip to the dog park and, f she does, we’ll post it here.  Its gonna be kinda hard tho, and probly short, cause the _ _ _ _ _ _ are in most of the pics.  Maybe she can make a slide show of them both together in some of the thousands of pics of them (LOL) and just include whatever few picks she can glean fromm the dog park outting after cropping out other fam members out.  what a shame and paiin in the ass that we have to be so careful now and do that. 

*

Anyway so at the dog park, Grace was like a dog in heaven.  She had so much fun it was ridiculous.  and she ran like the wind all over that about 5 acre park – complete with shallow swimmng pond for the dogs.  She showed no limp – there or since – and she hasn’t acted sore at all, so we’re hoping with everything in us that she donthave a torn ACL and won’t have to have that big surgery.  we’ll know in a while tho.  Its just really hard and scary – even for us so-called hard-asses here.  but then we’re all suckers for dogs and kids so I dont think any of us are hard-asses at all where either of them are concerned.

We’re all like nervous wrecks here of how we gonna deal with this giant dog’s recovery (especially with a VERY rambunctious boxer in the house – who BTW decieed day 1 that Gracie’s her mother)?   well we’ll see if we have too.  maybe she won’t have to have the big surgery.

Ok well the waiting game is on.  we’re praying for our baby.  We just gotta hold on to faith that God’ll be merciful and not allow another puppy/young dog to die on us.

*

Oh yeah, the dog park was full of big dogs but Grace and one white siberian were the two biggest dogs there.  That just weirded us out cause I mean we knew she’s a monsterdoodle like her predecessor (we purposely picked out another pup that showed all the signs of being another “bohemoth”.  but we had no clue how really huge Gracie is til she got around other big dogs.  wow  And she’s still just a pup.   

Labradoodles are a designer dog originally from Australia.  the real ones are the standard/”giant’ poodle and lab – so we’re talking big dog on any of them.  Then Labs grow til they’re 2 and then they fill out.   And their labradoodle coat don’t come in til they’re past 2.  Annie’s coat was just coming in to the point that she was looking  f-i-n-e when she coughed one day – and then was dead weeks later.   Like Annie, gracie’s coat is beginning to come in along the top of her back ridge – so she, like Annie did too, looks like she has a mohawk right now.  its funny

a couple weeks ago or whenever that was she was at the vet with this injury Grace weighed in at I think 67 pounds then.  That’s a BIG labradoodle – even for a full-grown male – and she’s a female and hasn’t even started filling in yet.   

Gracie’s magnificent – like Annie was before her.  Please God let this one live and mature and not die from some weird malady nobody’s ever heard of  – - -

heart cancer?!!?!?!  Who’s ever even heard of heart cancer?  We was a medical transcriptionist our whole career in one of the top teaching hospitals in the country and nboody here remembers EVER even hearing of freaking heart cancer.  So who’s ever even heard of heart cancer?  Go ahead and think on that – I’ll wait.   Nobody.  that’s it. nobody’s ever heard of it.  Our vet (who’s our body age) had never even heard of it.  anway sigh

 anyway and pleasae God let her reach her full potential and have a long happy life.  

*

k John just got back from dropping Gracie off at the vet.  oh please god dont let her have to have that big surgery!  oh yeah and please God help us not be crazy today while waiting to be called that our baby’s ok

G

3-24-09 – Gypsy… We went to Raw!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Voices by Rev Theory

 

 

Woo hoo Jess is the bomb!!!!    She gave us a copy of her slide show on her MS of when we were at Raw.

Yeah, we WERE there last year – june 30th (no  I didn’t remember that date - jess just told me *g*) 

We saw CM Punk (THE hottest man alive) cash in money in the bank and win the heavyweight title.

We saw Rey Mysterio do the 619.

We saw Kofi Kingston (who is the 2nd hottest hottest man alive) do his “oooh oooh oooh” -  oops that means your ass just got kicked – move

we saw Cryme Tyme (who are just too cool and hot for words)

Oh yeah Edge was there.  What an ass.  I hate Edge.  and it was sooooooooooooooo fun to watch Punk run out there – right past Batista (yep saw him too) - shocking the shit outta both of them, and cashing in money in the bank when he kicked Edge’s ass!!!

I’m not even mentioning JBL cause I REALLY cant stand him.  oops I just did *g*

Amy had various moments of mourning cause her fave wrestler – Jeff Hardy – had just got traded to Smackdown like two days before Raw came here.

We bought OMG so much shit!  we got the shirts LOL  We got hardy boyz necklaces.  oh and can’t forget the fab HBK cowboy hat -  which sits in its place of honor on our shelf.

John said he’d about never had so much fun just cause we both had so much.  He was great to take us – and let us spend all that money and not even bitch at us or grumble or nothing.  and that was after the small fortune it cost just for the tickets. 

Here’s my fave entry song – if it works.  Damn i cant figure the music out.  its supposed to be “voices” by rev theory – orton’s theme song altho I hate him too

Did I mention we saw Cena too?  Jess about died over that.  it was too funny. s he’s as bad about Cena as Amy is about Jeff Hardy

Thanks Jess!!!!!! 

Gypsy

3-24-09 – Cody… a movie that’s striking a cord in us about life and whether we’ve made a difference and will anybody really care when we’re gone and shit

watchng this pretty strange movie called “Mitch Albom’s The Five People You Meet” wth Jon Voight in it.  its about a man who dies in a carnival accident trying to save a little girl’s life.  and, when he gets to heaven, he finds out he has to meet 5 people who he had a huge impact on their life or they on his.  

This guy feels like his life was a failure, that he never accomplished anything of significance, that nothing he did mattered, that he had no impact on anybody else’s life.  In other words, he feels he lived a pointless useless life – and now he’s dead and all his chances are gone.  I’m guessing that’s why he has to meet up with 5 people from his life – so he can have an epiphany that his life did have meaning. 

anyway so the movie’s only on the 2nd meeting, and I’m thinking yeah i’m not so sure we should be watching this movie.  But its ended up being one of them every bodies’ out kinda things cause its like morbidly fascinating altho nobody really knows why I dont think.  Somebody here even said to Jess “I wonder if this is gonna give either of us nightmares tonite”. I’m beginning to think tho that this movie might hold a really big msg for us or something. 

* 

anyway so in the first meeting in heaven right after he dies, the man meets up with a guy who saved his life when he was a little boy – and he didn’t even realize it.   that man sacrificed his life to save a little boy he didn’t even know (the newly-dead man).

 and he grew up and was living his life.  But he was unhappy – always feeling not good enough, always feeling like a failure, never feeling like he mattered or that anything he did had any significance.

Then he got sent to war.  which brings him to the 2nd meeting. 

* 

 he’s meeting up with the guy (now dead of course) who was his superior officer in the war.  

In this instance, the officer made a huge sacrifice for him – to give him a chance to get home and have a life after the war.  Only the man instead went home and became bitter and couldn’t get over what had happened to him in the war.  and cause of that bitterness, he lost his wife and everything – and he spent his life feeling not good enough, like nothing he did mattered, like he meant nothing to anybody.  

and he’s all upset to find out that his officer sacrificed his life so that he could live what he believed had been a pointless/useless life, and the officer says:  you don’t get it.  sacrifice aint something to be ashamed of.  Its something to be proud of.  When people stop sacrificing for one another, they lose what makes them human.  Its the noblest thing we do

the newly-dead man says;  you lost everything (to save me)

and the dead officer says:  well thats the thing about sacrifice.  sometimes when you think your losing something, your really just passing it on to somebody

the officer says he had waited all this time for the man to come to heaven too cause he had to ask for forgiveness for what he had to do in order to save the man’s life all those years ago.  the man asks him why he chose to wait there – in the midst of the war zone if he was in heaven.  and the officer says he wanted to see what life was like before everybody started killing each other in the war

and the  newly-dead man looks around him at the war-torn countryside and says:  but this is war

officer says:   our eyes aint the same soldier.  This is what I see 

and he spreads his arms around – and suddenly the war-torn countryside is a beautiful paradise. 

He thanks the newly-dead man for forgiving him for doing what he had to do in order to save his life, and says that’s what he needed - and walks off in to the paradise. 

*

Like I said, this is just the 2nd person of 5 this guy’s gotta meet in heaven – all people who either he impacted their life in some gigantic way or they his.  In both meetings so far, he’s begged of the people he’s met to just tell him if he was able to save the little girl he himself died trying to save – and they’ve both told him they can’t tell him.  I’m assuming we’ll find out at the end. 

* 

Oh yeah – and all thru this movie, it keeps going back to the present – to life on earth – to the people left behind.  little vignettes of how people are grieving for him and mmissing him -  people he didn’t even know care.  and how much went on surrounding how he died trying to save that little girl and all. 

*

I dont know what else to say right now.  i dont really knwo why i stopped this movie to write this.  I just know that its seems significant.  Maybe it seems so significant cause here we are at the end-time of our own life – and you find yourself examining and picking things apart…

did I do this wrong?

did I do that wrong?

could we’ve done this or that better or different?

Should we have made a different decision in this situation or that one?

Has my life, our life, meant anything to anybody?  have we made a difference anywhere… to anyone…

 

just thinking, you know?

Cody mostly

3-23-09 – Amy… Jess/Hom saved Riley’s life

its pain patch changing day so of course i’m MISERABLE.  there just aint no way to explan what it feels like the morning of the pain patch change.  anyways i wanna try to distract myself today instead of laying here like a lump and/or whining but there’sseveral things I been wanting to write and i donno where to start.  also sometimes nobody here writes about a lot of stuff cause its a pain inthe ass to try to write about whatever and keeping it where the only personal info will be about us or john or sometimes Hom to certain extents.  theres a whole other world of things going on in our life – good and wonderful and memory things and yeah some bad and/or upsetting stuff too that we cant write about no more in public cause well cause.  but i’m gonna give some a shot and see how far I get.

first several weeks ago Jess, who is already like our own personal superhero or something, saved riley’s life – and he’s still doing real good.  well except for the mysterious how the hell did he get it scrape injury on one of his ears. b ut its slowly healing.  _  _ _ came over one day when we was still having to bandage it up – and his poor little ear stood straight out like a well kinda like a pippy longstocking piggy tail.  we had just told Jess that we just knew she was gonna come over before we could get that thing off and laugh her ass off – and sure enough.  punk ass *g* 

she was all laughing and stuff and I was telling her to stop altho it was funny.  then I guess I got this gleam in my eye or something and she was like “no!  do NOT take a picture of that poor dog with that contraption on his ear.  leave him some dignity!”   lol

*

anyway so Riley’s our 18 year old maltese.  he cant see no more and he can only hear like 2-3 feet away – IF you scream.  altho its amazing cause he seems to be able to hear us or feel our vibes or something cause he can find us in thehouse.  then he stands there nearby and his little head bobs around like a antenna tryig to key in on the source of the sound waves or whatever and find us. 

oh and his smeller’s like totally intact.  Riley can smell food a mmile away.  lol  and if its his fave – peppermint of all things - he goes nuts trying to get to it.  he’s so ubberspoiled now – even way worse than ever ever before  that some us here even gives him peppermints a couple times a day just cause he loves them so much and what difference does it make anyways at this point?  let him have some stuff he lvoes. 

he’s happy tho and has a great and VERY VERY spoiled life except for his progressign probs with his congestive heart failre that makes him heave sometimes to the point that it gets scary

 ok so one nite Riley got in respiratory troublein the nite.  we dealt with it by ourself till about 4 a.m., doing everything we could think of to releive the pressure off his heart like we’ve learned to do. b ut noting working and we was like oh god he’s gonna die this time!  so we finally woke Jess up.

and she comes in here and holds him for a minute and says yeah he’s gonna die this time.  omg it was oh there aint no words.  Riley is our baby  i mean our baby!  we are his everything – and he is our constant companion.  constant.  we are his little world.  we always have been. 

well we had _ _ _ _ _ _ _ with us which made it more difficult cause we didn’thwant her here when he died and also cause we was afraid we’d wake her up to the drama going on so about 6 I called _ _ _ _ _ _ _  and said you better come get her cause Riley’s dying from his congestive heart failure.   

*

and we was laying there holding our baby riley and praying with everything in us for God not to take him from us now cause we just couldn’t take it right now.  so much loss been going on for months – deaths and people dying and medical probs with family members – all on top of our stuff we gotta deal with every day.  we just cant lose our baby Riley right now.

so at some point Jess gets an idea.  what if an inhaler would help him breathe?  I mean we all know his days is numbered.  we’ve known for years that he has congestive heart failure and he’s taken meds for it for years and we’ve know he’d eventually die from it if old age didn’t get him first.

but so anyway Jess got this inhaler idea but we didnt know and couldn’t find online anything about dog inhalers.  so luckily thank god john gets home early and they race to the store.  actually talked tot he pharmacist -and there happens to be some inhaler youcan buy over the counter.  oh yeah, we’d already excluded by then that the vets had anything like that.

so they bring this inhaler home and we was getting ready to give it to him but first we had no clue how much to give him without killing him.  i mean he weighs less than 5 pounds!  we finally decided he’s dying anyways so we was just gonna go for it and hope it worked.

k so that decidd, and _ gone by now anways so we start to administer the inhaler breathing treatment – and can’t.  tiny little 18 year old Riley even dyign still had enough fight in him to go hell no you aint putting that over my mouth – and Jess was afraid she’d break his neck or soething  cause he’s so tinya nd fragile if she forcefully held him down

*

so we both sit back and stare at Riley and at the inhaler while his respiratory distress is getting to the point that he’s obviously very obviusly dying.  (oh and I think _ _ _ _ _ _ had even come by by then to see if there was anything she could do and was like um i’m sorry but he’s dying)  .  and we here is like oh god we cant believe he’s actually gonna DIE without us even getting to try the inhaler!  

*

Jess just  camein and changed the pain patch.  she’s my freaking hero.  no lie.  she told me to go ahead and take a break-thru pain med (which is morphoids) cause its all humid today and that always makes our pain worse.  so i guess i gotta but i hate that.  ihate taking meds.  meds suck.  sigh

*

anyways Jess and cody are all about the hard rock, hate everybody, gonna kill you all music now and she’s playing hers all like max loud while she gets ready for work and John just came in and i told him that music is WAYYYY worse than her three-beats of R&B (yeah obviously not and R&B fan here) and then he said at first he thot it was coming from in here and I was like no and not only that but I feel like its gonna break my brain.  and he just laughed.

*

ok that’s two randoms in a row I think.  back to the story.  so anyways here we was – us and Jess/Hom staring at our dying riley and the tension and grief and horror was just palpable.   then she gets this aha look on her face and takes off.  i can hear her in the kitchen doing something and i’m like what you  doing. 

k let’s make this clear – we was like switching like crazy!!!!!  so i’m just saying I in this cause we was all over the place.

anyways so Jess comes back in a few minutes with one of them little plastic round fruit drink things we keep for the kids.  she had cleaned it and stuff.   she picks up scissors and cuts a hole in the bottom – and the lightbulb finally went off in our head – oh yeah!  she’s gonna stick the inhaler thingy in the hole she just made and then stick the original drink cup hole over his mouth and administer the med that way!!!!

so she picks riley up – who was just gray and barely taking a breath now and then by that time.  i aint exaggerating.   and she tries her invention.

it didin’t work!!!!

we gave each other an oh god!!!!! look.  then sat there staring at him and that bottle and the inhaler for seemed like forever.  then Jess grabs the little drink bottle and cut the top hole bigger so she could slip it all the way up his little snout and hold is securely hopefully – and tried again.

IT WORKED!!!!  

almost immediately, his breathing started becoming deeper and more often.  after oh seemed like forever but was prbly minutes, he was breathing almost normal again. 

So Jess had literally just saved Riley’s life. 

*

So she also immediately increased his heart meds double.  and since we still didn’t have no idea how much of that inhaler to administer, she just decided on a regimen for that and went with it. 

The change in our little Riley was just remarkable, unbelievable.  and what was shocking actually was that like everybody came to see about him.  made us feel good.   

people diss us about our dogs – especially our ancient little riley – but when he literally almost died, they all came.  _ _ _ _ _ _ said that her plan is to leave home for a month tho when he actually does die cause she dont wanna deal with us.  so we was like oh that’s nice – your gonna leave Jess and John alone to deal with us in our post-riley being gone insanity – and she was like hell yeah.  but she had come – they all had – so we know she was kidding.     

she did said tho “you do understand that this is temporary.  he’s ancient - 18 – and hardly NO dogs live that long no matter what you do – and he’s got congestive heart failure.  this thing that worked on him now is just gonna shut something else down, and his days is numbered anyways”.  and we was like yeah we understand 

*

so after ithink several days or maybe a week or more, Jess started weaning Riley’s heart med back toward normal (which we already knew was the max dose for him) and weaning the inhaler treatments back.  so he’s back now to his regular heart med dose, and only has inhaler treatments when he goes in to respiratory distress. 

but there aint no doubt about it at all – Jess/Hom saved Riley’s life that morning.  and they did it by coming up with something nobody else had ever thot of (like I said there aint even no dog inhalers - not that our vet or petsmart knew about anyways).  and they made a contraption outtta materials in the house to administer it to him. 

*

k so I’m like totally worn out.  we been intending to write about this for weeks now ever since it happened but knew it was gonna wear us out so its just now getting done. b ut this story had to be told.  i could dig and find a recent pic of him and format it to go on the site but i cant do that right now.   here’s a pic of our baby maltese Riley and us taken a couple years ago when he was 16, and this current crisis with our illness had only been going on a few months and we still looked not like death yet…

 

Amy

3-22-09 – Drake… Katt Williams cracks my shit up (adults only)

 

Cody’s right.  nobody’s funnier than katt williams.  this clip can always make me laugh no matter how much like shit i feel or how down I am.

Drake

3-19-09 – Amy… “dead and gone” w lyrics for Drake

 

Jess helped me find this but i just wanted the justin timberlake part cause them other lyrics disturb me.  that’s the part Drake relates to anyway.  I hope before we die Drake finds himself again cause well there aint nobody as cool and stuff as him when he’s himself

Amy

3-18-09 – Cody… Something profound Drake said a long time ago

Note:  Sometimes Drake can be so fucking profound.   I just ran across something he said       1  1/2 years ago that i think speaks to everybody left here now…

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“How do you grieve life?  I mean I know people can be angry at life.  But, how do you explain grieving it?  …I’m so tired of grief and illness and loss.  Tired of it, yet obviously not done with it.”  …Drake Aaron Phoenix, 11-07

3-18-09 – Cody… “lose yourself” video for Amy who loves Eminem

  

*

I know your overwhelmed and have such a hella load on your shoulders for a long time  now.  Hang tough baby girl.

be encouraged.

…and i’m done.

Cody

3-17-09 – Cody… my anthem or something – actually I think its Drake’s too

3-17-09 – Cody… for Gypsy – its her anthem or something