Published December 21, 2015 by Jen Lawson

Living with dog dementia: A new normal

Since I wrote about Sassy’s eye emergency a few weeks ago, I feel like we’ve entered into a new normal: caregiving.

It might seem strange to refer to taking care of a pet as caregiving. Isn’t that what we do all the time — making sure our animals get food, exercise, medical attention, and so on?

Yes. But to me, caregiving is when things are intensified, when the animal needs care that goes far beyond the day-to-day stuff.

A screenshot of her meds on the Medisafe app

And that’s where we are with Sassy.

She’s still on the six medications (three oral meds and three eye drops) for her glaucoma and three medications for her dementia. Some of the meds are given every other day, some twice a day, others once a day.

This new normal means getting notifications throughout the day from an app called Medisafe that helps us keep track of what she needs. Otherwise it would be a confusing mess.

This new normal also means she’s wearing diapers now. She’s never been good at letting us know when she has to go, and one of her medications results in her having to pee all the time.

After too many accidents in the house, we resorted to buying Simple Solution dog diapers. The first time we put a diaper on her, she seemed upset and managed to pull it off. So I ordered diaper covers that have Velcro fasteners, so they act sort of like undies for her and so they’ve stayed on.

Getting the diapers on her is a struggle for me because she’s always squirming and trying to sit down and/or get away. So Mike has become the designated Diaper Guy, and he’s really good at it!

Another facet of this new normal: We have to carry her up and down the stairs. I think this is more a function of her dementia — diminished motor control is one of the symptoms. She’s also on a painkiller that makes her woozy, so it would be a disaster if she attempted the stairs on her own. We use a baby gate to keep her off them.

At first she was trying to bite us (and sometimes succeeding) as we carried her up and down the stairs, but now she’s passive and just lets us. I think she knows she’s not able to do it on her own anymore. We even have to carry her up and down the two steps leading from the sidewalk to our front door.

I had a dream recently that Sassy was flying up and down the stairs on her own like she used to, and that made me really sad.

She’s been at the veterinarian’s office every week for the past two weeks, yet another part of this new normal of ours, and it’s getting expensive. But whatever, you do what you have to do.

We have one visit this week, another the following week, and hopefully after that her eye pressure will be stable enough to go for longer between visits. We’re trying to transition her off one of the eye drops, but she’ll need some of these meds long-term.

I do know for sure we can’t leave her alone for more than an hour or two, so we won’t be going on any sort of vacation anytime soon. I’m glad I work from home and Mike does too most of the time.

She’s our baby and we’ll do everything we can for her.

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What do you fear?

Published December 9, 2015 by Jen Lawson

What do you fear?

Fears. We all have them.

I used to have lots of fears, and they mostly stemmed from my former job covering crime for the Las Vegas Sun.

I was afraid to answer my door because of home invasion robberies.

I was afraid to cross the street because of all the pedestrians I wrote about who had been hit while trying to make it across the wide roads in the Las Vegas Valley.

An armed bank robbery that I interrupted in a Philly suburb taught me to fear banks. I didn’t set foot in one for at least 10 years.

All of those are gone now.

My biggest fear now, besides clowns (a childhood fear that has never really left me) is financial ruin.

I can’t really explain why, because I’ve never been in such a state, nor have I really witnessed it close up.

Granted, I’ve been strapped and I’ve had money concerns — after all, the reporter jobs that messed with my mind so much never really paid all that well. (How’s that for adding insult to injury?)

But nothing awful ever happened. I didn’t have many luxuries, but I managed, and everything was essentially fine.

I guess having resources equals stability, and stability is important.

Articles like this and this, written by a woman who is struggling to get by on minimum wage jobs, terrifies me. I can’t imagine ever being in this situation, but I guess anything’s possible.

I don’t usually give money to homeless people, but I’m thinking maybe I should, since I empathize with them? Do you have any opinions on this?

Thinking about fears has made me see how destructive some fears can be.

Some people feel a need to carry a gun.

Some people support a ban on refugees and Muslims.

Some people are straight-up racist.

The way I see it, fear is at the heart of all of this. Basically the right wing machine has turned some Americans into extremely frightened and irrational people.

They are absolutely terrified of people who are different from them. They’re terrified of the world that exists outside their bubble. And fear drives them down a dark and hateful road.

And, some people do good deeds because they fear they’ll burn in hell if they don’t.

Some people believe in the concept of karma, which motivates them to do good things because they think good things will then come back to them.

What about just being a good person because it’s the moral, ethical, and right thing to do, and because people’s feelings matter, and not because you’re afraid of the consequences if you don’t?

Fears can also hold us back — they can zap our confidence and make us unwilling to try new things.

Fears can keep us in crappy situations, crappy jobs and crappy relationships. Raise your hand if you’ve been there. I have.

But fears can also fade.

I used to be much more terrified of financial ruin than I am now. Before, it was more comfortable to make minimum payments on my card rather than paying it all off every month because paying it all off every month meant waving bye-bye to a big chunk of change. Liquidity made me feel secure.

But I don’t do the minimum payment thing anymore because doing so ultimately costs much, much more. (Thanks to my husband for drilling that into my brain.)

See? Fears mess with us and make us act irrationally and in ways that are destructive. But reasoned thought can snap us back.

I hope that dreadful, frightened presidential candidate can snap back, too, or at least ease up on the rhetoric that’s poisoning the minds of his misguided, terrified followers.

Did you know a severed pig’s head was found outside a Philadelphia mosque? All because of a fear of Islam.

Now, that’s fucking scary.

What are your biggest fears?

(Also, what’s your take on giving cash to the homeless?)

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Living with dog dementia and now canine glaucoma: A day at the emergency vet

Published December 6, 2015 by Jen Lawson

Living with dog dementia and now canine glaucoma: A day at the emergency vet

Yesterday was a painful day for me, Mike and Sassy. I know Sassy’s physical pain far outweighed the anguish we felt, though. She was diagnosed with canine glaucoma, a very painful condition that could result in blindness.

When I got out of the shower Saturday morning I noticed Sassy had vomited some watery, foamy stuff, and a few minutes later, she curled up in a tight little ball in the upstairs hallway.

I knew something was wrong because she usually paces back and forth during that time of day. I went over to her and saw she was trembling and didn’t seem to be able to open her eyes. I called Mike and asked him to come home immediately from the gym, I called the vet but they were closed, so I called the emergency vet and was told to bring her right away.

sassyeye1 — Waiting and waiting and waiting, just trying to comfort her.

We were there within minutes, but we had to wait three hours to be called. During this time, she was really struggling and appeared to be in a lot of pain. Mike took her outside to see if she had to pee, and she bumped into things outside — she seemed to be blind. I sprawled out on the floor of the waiting room with her on my lap in an attempt to soothe my baby.

Finally they brought her into the back. We couldn’t be in the exam room with her; we were told to leave and come back in 90 minutes. We headed to a pub for lunch but it was hard to eat when all I could really do was cry. What would life be like as a blind dog? How could we prevent her from getting hurt? Then again, there are some cool blind people, like Stevie Wonder, right? I thought the cause was something neurological, like a stroke or seizure.

When we returned, the vet brought us into an exam room and told us she has canine glaucoma in her left eye, characterized by a great deal of pressure caused by fluid buildup. It’s much more serious and painful for dogs than humans (and I read that humans rate the pain level as 12 on a scale of 1-10) but the good news is she’s not blind right now. The vet said Sassy was in a lot of pain and was keeping her eyes closed or squinty to help ease it, so that was a relief.

Canine glaucoma can come on suddenly, and it’s always an emergency. The vet said she believes she has secondary glaucoma, which means it’s probably caused by something more serious, like cancer. It does cause blindness in dogs, but we got her medical attention quickly, so it looks like that was mitigated or delayed.

We were sent home because the vet wanted to stabilize her before she was discharged. I trudged up the stairs and I fell asleep on the bed and awoke a few hours later when my cell phone rang around 8 p.m. The pressure in her eye was finally down to normal levels, and it was time to pick her up!

We were given three different types of eye drops as well as three oral medications (not to mention a bill of $611, but I feared it would be much worse, so I was happy to pay this). One of the meds is a painkiller, which knocked her out. It was good to see her resting and feeling some relief.

Today the bloodshot squinty eye condition came back. She seemed to be in pain even an hour after getting her pain meds, so it was difficult to see this. She was pawing her eye and rubbing her face on the bed — poor puppy. We’re going to make an appointment with her regular vet tomorrow, because this is a lifelong condition and it’s likely that the right eye will also experience glaucoma. And we need to pinpoint the cause of this. Cancer? Something else?

sassysunday — Her eye this afternoon — a setback?

She’s now on three meds for dementia, three oral meds for glaucoma, and three eyedrops for glaucoma.

I’m so glad I work from home because she can’t really be left alone now.

She’s my interspecies life partner and I’ll do everything I can for her.

Has anyone else experienced this?

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Mike’s Eats: What my husband cooks for me

Published December 2, 2015 by Jen Lawson

Mike’s Eats: What my husband cooks for me

I’m a lucky woman. My husband cooks for me just about every night. Even when he’s tired and doesn’t feel like it, he’ll put together something that’s usually amazing.

(Let’s face it, if he didn’t, we’d probably starve…)

The task of cooking for me is a daunting one. I’m a pain in the ass when it comes to food — I’m a vegetarian for going on 18 years now, and I’m mostly vegan, too. But that part is easy. The frustrating part is that I’m a picky eater, and my preferences change — sometimes I’ll find I really love something only to despise it a short time later.

I think I get my unadventurous palate from my dad. He loathed tomatoes, and by extension, all Italian food. I’m not that extreme — my main dislikes are onions (but onion powder is okay, and I’m usually fine with actual onions as long as they’re cooked and nobody tells me they’re in there), mushrooms (but I’m starting to like chantrelles), hot peppers and really anything that’s remotely spicy. I also don’t like things with an onion-like texture, like celery, but celery seed is okay. And I’m not into drippy, messy stuff.

So, you see, I’m a total nightmare and I feel bad about it. But Mike loves me and wants to make me happy so he keeps my preferences in mind when he cooks for me.