Lot's Wife

The good news is the computer is working again, and I'm restored to the net. The bad news is that it took a new hard drive to do it. Just goes to show you, you never, never know. The problem was that I was downloading an update, and the computer froze midway through. The tech folks said there was nothing I could have done. Next time, though, I will make sure I am in town with 5 green bars on my hook up. And next time I will definitely back up before I download.

As luck would have it, I had finally figured out how to use the external hard drive I had bought about 9 months ago, and I did back up at least most of my important files about a month ago. These are files that mean a whole lot to me, i.e., my writing, my music, my photos. My address book did back up, so I only lost the most recent email addresses. My new essays I have been publishing on the web, so they were still accessible. About the only thing I failed to back up was my Journal. And I'm not so sure it was a bad thing.

The last three years have not been pleasant. I lost my father in 2000, and we went through a difficult adjustment, myself and my family. There was the family farm to consider, and the running of it. My mother, at 80, rallied and did a tremendous job of stepping in to fill my father's shoes, but by 2005 she was sick with some physical problems, and heartsick, I think, missing my father. She died in March of that year despite everything I could do. 

A month later, within 2 days of each other, I lost one of my oldest friends to a car wreck, and the mobile home I'd been living in for 25 years caught fire and we almost died. I wrote about that in my piece about Jack. 

Once my mother died, it was a free for all in the family. It was a very horrible time. I opted out. I am just too tired anymore to deal with power struggles and ulterior motives and drama and all of that other crap. I actually, surprisingly, found it somewhat easy to take the money, turn around and walk away, and build myself a new farm, and a new home. I bought my Mac about three months after my mother died, installed the Journal program and wrote pretty faithfully about everything. So there was this record, and even though I hadn't ever gone back and read anything I had written, still there was that knowledge that I had written everything down. It was there, like a dark grey cloud in an otherwise blue sky.

It's not there anymore, and the strangest thing -- I feel absolutely light as air. I darn near feel like a new born babe. Just knowing all the bad stuff I had written about was gone, was the most liberating thing. I realized I never had to go back and read about it all again. There was now no way that could ever be done. It's like the sentiments were documented, expressed, and then tossed to the wind.

I woke up to a crystal blue sky today with a ton of sunlight all around, and with my morning coffee checked in with the computer. There was my horoscope for today, saying something to the effect that it was time to move on, that new things couldn't be done as long as I was still involved with things that had happened in the past. How bizarre!! It occurred to me that perhaps some other hand had somehow been involved in the computer freeze up. Odd that the only thing I really lost was the one thing that I really did not need to hold on to. And then I remembered the story of Lot's wife, that God had told her not to look back lest she become a pillar of salt. That's not the first time I'd thought about that, but it is now the first time that, with a smile on my face, I know I won't be looking back, and even can't cause there's nothing there. This is great! I don't even have the choice. I tell you, between the depression, the gray skies and the rain, I was beginning to wonder, but perhaps it's not my time for crystallizing just yet. 

Computer Down

Regretfully my laptop has taken a nosedive, which is why I just answered a comment with "anonymous." I'm on a friend's laptop writing this at this time. My laptop will be leaving me tomorrow and will be gone for about 7 to 10 days, they say, so I probably won't get to post anything during this time.

Thanks for visiting, and I'll be back as soon as I can.

Lyn

Testing for Lung Cancer

Someone asked me about testing for lung cancer, so I thought I would address that quickly. First and foremost, when talking about medical stuff, I have to say that I am not a licensed respiratory therapist in Kentucky at this time (but will be within a couple of months), and am currently licensed in the state of Ohio, as that is the last place I worked. Regardless of where I am, or am not, licensed, I have to say that I have to act under my profession's standards, one of which is that I am not allowed to practice medicine without a physician over me. So with that in mind, I have to say, your physician is the best person to talk to if you have medical concerns. I can tell you what I know of certain things, but for a proper diagnosis and treatment, you need to speak with a physician.

With that in mind, I know a little about lung cancer because it is how my father died. Believe me, between my experience as a respiratory therapist, my education, and taking care of my father, I could easily write a book about it. Very basically, though, cancers are cells that have, for one reason or another, grown out of control. There are many different types, but they are generally classified as small cell or non-small cell cancers. This covers cancers that affect the alveolar sac, the bronchials and the tissue. 

One of the insidious things about lung cancer is that there are no nerve endings in the lung tissue itself, so that you can have a tumor there the size of a grapefruit, and it won't hurt. Common symptoms prior to diagnosis of cancer are shoulder pain, a sensation of something pulling,  deviation in your trachea (your trachea moving to the right or left instead of running down the center), increased shortness of breath (due to decreased lung capacity), and coughing, either productive (including blood) or non-productive. The symptom that my father initially presented with was shoulder pain, which was misdiagnosed as "Uncle Arthur" (arthritis). 

Lung cancer, at least, causes you to lose a lot of weight, really fast.

Here we get into the practice of medicine vs. the reimbursement machine. Health insurance, medicare, medicaid, etc., wants a diagnosis before they will reimburse for a procedure. It's better to go to your doctor looking for a specific procedure and the reason for it instead of with just a bunch of vague symptoms. So if you were concerned about lung cancer, the very first thing I would tell my doctor is, I have this particular symptom, and I'm concerned about lung cancer because (history of smoking, family history or whatever), and I would like a chest x-ray, (which may or may not pick it up, but still, it's the first step). Hopefully you have a good doctor that you can be truthful with and say this.  And he, or she, will do a few procedural things in the office and then let you get an x-ray. If you don't have a good doctor, you can always go to an urgent treatment center, and complain of coughing or something to do with your lungs. They will almost always do a chest x-ray for you. 

Here is the kicker, though. The doctors will look at the x-ray, but there are professional radiologists who also do a reading, and this reading is a lot more involved than the cursory reading you would get at a doctor's office, or the UTC. It is your right, as a patient, to get a copy of that x-ray, and to get a copy of the radiologist's reading, and I would definitely do that. 

I will probably write more about being a smart patient at a later time, but that is the point I would like to make now. So, to answer the question, I would first get a chest x-ray, then get the radiologist's reading, and based on that talk with your doctor. If you don't have a good one, get one. If there is anything to be seen on the x-ray, then you would do the next step, which would be to get a cat scan or MRI. Then if there is something, a biopsy. 

Try to find a doctor who expects you to be a savvy patient. This is so important. Doctors are not gods, even though they are treated like they are. Just because they are a doctor, and maybe even an excellent doctor, if you can't be up front, honest and direct with them, then maybe they are not the doctor for you. It's your job to be critical of them, because it's your life you're putting in their hands. When I was going through respiratory school, someone once asked me, what do you call a med student who has graduated with low C grades? The answer, of course, was "Doctor." So be a critical consumer when dealing with medical issues. Access to your medical information is your right, and it would be better for you if you dealt with people who understood and respected that. 

At Home With The Blues

I read an interesting story in the news the other day -- it was classified as news of the weird, or something to that effect. It was a short little article, concise and to the point (unlike my essays), and it basically said that some people who take prozac stop taking it after a while because it makes them feel too good. Seems that feeling good is so alien to these people, that it made them horribly uncomfortable, and they couldn't take it anymore (feeling good or the prozac).

I can actually understand that. Clinical depression and I have been bedfellows for years and years now, and it's a relationship I have long given up hope of ever being divorced from. I have also taken prozac, although I don't now. It did make me feel pretty good. Actually a little too good. I wound up doing some things I pretty much wish I hadn't done now, which we won't get into here. Oh well...

I have tried to explain this malady to friends and acquaintances and very rarely see the light of understanding in their eyes. They listen to me politely but I'm pretty sure they're probably saying something like "God, Lyn, get over yourself," or "Get a grip," or "Such a Diva!!" in their minds. I'm sure they think that all I really have to do is pull myself up by own bootstraps, but if that was true, I'd be the first in line to buy a pair of boots (not owning any). It's not bootstraps that does it -- it's more like that bonk on the side of the head you get when you don't drink your V8.

Clinical depression is not about feeling sad. Unless I've just lost a parent or loved one, or pet, I rarely feel sad. It's more about really not feeling anything. It's worse than apathy. It's more like a lack of a needed spark. If you listen to the clinicians explain it, it makes perfect sense. There are synapses in your brain that your nerve impulses run through, and they need to be bathed in certain chemicals, such as serotonin, for those impulses to make the leap from one synapse to the other. In clinical depression, the person might have the serotonin bath, but it doesn't stay long enough for the impulse to get through. Thus serotonin re-uptake inhibitors, or anti-depressants such as prozac. When the bath is there, there is no signal. Or the bath leaves and here comes the signal. Everything is mismatched and delayed. Reactions, if they happen, are delayed and sluggish. Feelings, if you have them, are delayed. And the sensation of being out of body and space and time happens a lot.

Another thing that happens a lot is lack of activity. Given a quiet day with little or no outside stimuli, I have been known to sit for hours, and even as the sun goes down, never turning on a light -- just sitting there in the dark. My mind is flying through vistas of thoughts, memories, songs or other odd bits of things, and my body is catatonic, hypnotized, almost totally unable to move on it's own. My mind can beg, plead with my body to move, but it remains as still as the big rocks we keep digging up on the farm. I'm not sad. I'm not blue. I'm just "not." It takes a strong stimulus to click me out of it -- something like the dogs barking, someone at the door, or an emergent need to go to the bathroom.

Music, thank God, can break through. I've often told my close friends, if I'm lying in the hospital, and they're trying to decide whether or not to let me die, hook me up to an EEG and play music. If there's no brain activity, let me go, cause if I can't respond to music, I'm gone. Music, somehow, provides a link, maybe through stimulating endorphans, I don't know. That would be interesting to check out. Of course, another rather awkward thing happens to me when I listen to music. I become more and more incapable of maintaining conversation. Once the music is turned on, my mind tunes to it, and it becomes totally intent on following every musical riff of every instrument that is playing. My body subconsciously moves in total and complete time to the different beat of every different instrument. I begin to twitch like a live wire. It's not something I can control very easily, and at this age, I don't really want to control it anymore. I love the feeling of being taken away that it brings. Something melodic like John Mayer's Stop This Train will take me so far away from where I am that when the music stops, for a moment I don't know where I am. So it's not particularly a good thing for me at work. Especially when you work in a hospital.

There is one other strange thing that happens in these states. I find if my laptop is in the area, open and ready to go, I may actually begin writing something -- something that at first may be weird, fragmented, and make no sense whatsoever. But eventually something will come from it -- a song, a poem, an article, an idea. It's because I'm so old and learned to type when I was 12. Typing is a totally automatic thing for me, something I rarely have to think about.

So what do I do with all of this? A brain that doesn't work right? I know my process. Everybody should know their process. It is very important in everything you do. I put music on pretty quickly in the day. My laptop is always ready, and I've given myself permission to write whatever I want whenever I want to. And of course, I keep several dogs. Even if they can't find something to bark at (one of their favorite pass times), they will, from time to time, come into my office to check on me and visit, Jack slipping his long, sleek nose under my hand to force me to pet him. Time to wake up, Mom.

Smoking

I once worked at a large rehab center in Cincinnati, and there had a conversation with a nurse who confided she had recently had a heart attack and had died nine times on the table. She was trying to quit smoking because of it. (No, she said, she had never 'seen the light').
“I guess you never had to worry about quitting,” she said to me, alluding to the fact that I am a respiratory therapist.
“On the contrary,” I said. “I love to smoke.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“I had to quit,” I said. I looked down at the newly waxed floor. It wasn’t a great memory.
“Well, how did you do it?,” she asked, pulling at the neck of her scrubs a little and exposing her nicotine patch. “I got this and it works some, but I still smoke a little.”
“With the patch on?” I asked. “No, no, no, not a good idea. Very, very bad, triples your chance of another heart attack.”
Up went the eyebrows again. Hadn’t they bothered to tell her?
“Well, I still get the cravings,” she said. “I don’t know what to do with them.” She paused. “How long have you been quit?”
“You know, I don’t really know,” I replied. “It’s been a while. It wasn’t like all the other times. I didn’t mark the date or anything. I just quit cold turkey.” I gave her a sad smile and added, "I still get the cravings, and still don't know what to do with them."
We chatted a few minutes more. I gave her some tips for quitting, warned her again about the danger of smoking with a patch on, and went on with my busy job – a large part of which was taking care of end stage COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) patients. I could tell she wasn’t impressed by my story, and I had not given her some magical trick that would make all of her angst and cravings go away.
But the conversation stayed with me, and there were several things it brought to mind. I remembered when a fellow RT kept emailing me about upcoming and pending legislation to ban tobacco, and I finally wrote him and told him to please stop, that I wasn’t going to join him in his fight to get tobacco banned. Yes, me, the respiratory therapist. I don’t want the government involved in my personal rights, and I don’t think it’s an issue that should be settled in the courts or through legislation.
I think legislation to ban any moral issue, with the exception of mountain top removal and child exploitation, which I believe to be criminal acts, is a waste of time. As with Prohibition, the black market will undoubtedly step in and take up the slack. In the case of tobacco, they will market cigarettes not made in the United States where the production of tobacco and the chemicals used on it are under extremely strict control, where all farmers handling those chemicals must pass certification to be able to buy and use them. There is no control of any kind over the growing practices used on tobacco that is imported. Herbicides and pesticides like DDT and Paraquat, that are no longer allowed in the US, are routinely used in other countries. It is why, as a respiratory therapist, I tell my patients, friends and family, quit if you can, but if you’re going to smoke, smoke American (or Native American).
Which brings up an interesting side point. According to traditional Native American lore, tobacco is a spirit, and probably, like most spirits, doesn’t appreciate being taken for granted and used without ceremony. Tobacco should never be mindlessly chain smoked, hanging out of somebody’s lips like drying spittle. It is strong medicine. As a native born Kentuckian I will tell you burley should be “sipped,” like fine whiskey or fine wine. If you can't enjoy it that way, then you shouldn't be smoking it. Period. But big tobacco makes sure there will be no "sipping" on cigarettes.
Why? Big tobacco is in the business of making money for big tobacco. They want to sell lots of cigarettes. They don't want you to sip it, they want you to chain smoke it, so they lace it with extra nicotine. Nicotine is about 200 times more addictive than cocaine, and it makes your brain feel so, so good. They learned a long time ago that smoking non-filter cigarettes was killing off their 40 to 50 year old customers, so they filtered their cigarettes so people would live into their 60’s and 70’s – an extra 20 years worth of cigarettes! A lot of our tried and true businesses are in the same category, e.g., most of your fast food places. News flash, they don’t care about your nutrition.
I have been a respiratory therapist (among other things), for about 14 years now, and this is my take home message. You get COPD from smoking the way most people smoke. It is an insidious condition that is comprised of three different pulmonary conditions: chronic bronchitis, emphysema and asthma. It is incurable.
Dying from COPD, from one who works with COPD patients, and has had to watch, is one of the most horrible and brutal deaths you can possibly imagine. By the end, you’ve gone into renal failure and you’re on dialysis. Medications you’ve been given to try to stop the onslaught have made you diabetic. The financial cost is staggering, especially if you don't have insurance. You and your family can lose everything you’ve ever worked for. The suffering you go through, and the suffering you cause your family and friends is horrible. It is an unimaginably slow and torturous drowning in your own secretions, trying to breathe through airways that have collapsed and to get air to places where it can’t go anymore, never being able to fully exhale. You mouth to us to let you die, because you have a breathing tube stuck down your vocal cords. You lie there in bed, unable to do anything for yourself, with tubes in all your orifices, yes, all of them. Your muscle and fat and tissue waste away so that you get horrible decubitus ulcers on your back and butt and hips that you can literally fit a fist into comfortably. Your hospital room reeks like a rotting, living corpse. You can lie this way for months, even years. Your body colonizes the foulest of bacterial infections.
Try this. Take a great, big, deep breath and hold it. Hold it until you cannot possibly hold it anymore and relish that unbelievable rush you get when you are able to exhale and empty your lungs. You can't do that with emphysema. You can't effectively exhale because carbon dioxide filled air stays trapped in the air sacs of your lungs, leaving you to feel like crap most of the time.
I have been a smoker, off and on for a very long time. I still break over. I relish the ceremony of smoking, the act of smoking. I enjoy it immensely. But I hardly ever do it anymore. Why? Because I placed my stethoscope over my own heart one day and just listened to it. Constant and steady, it was doing its job. And then I felt bad. And then I began to feel sorry for it and angry at myself. All the stupid stuff I did to myself and through it all my poor heart kept working so hard, so strong, so steady. I have a heart, a poor, hard-working, fist-sized beating heart! And if nobody else in the whole world cares, I do.
Smoking is an issue that has a little to do with genetics – there is a gene that codes for addictive behaviors – but it is largely an issue that has to do with your own sense of self, your self esteem, or lack of it, how you were raised, and how you are raising yourself. The tobacco is incredibly addictive, with all the crap they put in it, but the smoking is incredibly personal, and all about what it means to you. I can't tell you how to quit because I don't know what your smoking is about. That's something you're going to have to figure out yourself.

My smoking was about several things. It was about anger. It was about my space. I discovered I was extremely pissed off because I could never seem to find a quiet place for myself to be -- a place where I was truly me, and not someone's something. It was about carving out a tiny little fraction of space and time for myself, and when people wouldn't let me, instead of confronting them, I started to hide behind a smoke screen. That tiny little space became so very important. It was the ultimate game, my whole life, my little make believe world. I was trying so hard to be someone that I wasn’t, to please other people. Why was I doing that? Could it be that I didn't have the guts to do what I really wanted to do, that I was afraid of failing at it, and that rather than face that unpleasant thought, I just did what everybody else wanted, and then if I failed I could blame them? Well, it was an unpleasant thought, and I tried to ignore and forget it. I smoked, because when I smoked I bathed my brain in feel good endorphans and I put up an effective little smoke screen that I could hide behind.
I quit because I gave up on that. I quit because that lonely little organ that sits in my chest continues to beat faithfully, regardless of what I do to it. It beats regardless of who I am being. It beats because that is its job. It is my true friend, and I’m giving it a break. Whoever or whatever I am, how ever long it takes me to deal with this problem, I'm not going to screw my heart over. Bottom line. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

It's been a hard road, but I choose to look you in the face and be myself with you now rather than to try to be who or what you may expect me to be. I come with issues. Everybody does. It might have been someone else’s fault while I was young. But I grew up; it became my responsibility, and my fault because I didn’t take responsibility for my own actions.
With that comes a huge lesson, and that lesson is, I am no good to anybody if I am not good to myself. If I don’t eat good foods, exercise, sleep well, surround myself with good, positive people with the capacity to love, if I don’t express myself with my music and writing, cherish my boyfriend and my excellent friends and animals and my surroundings, I do a lousy job when I go to work. I’m not able to put my patients before me. I don’t do anyone any good. I come home sore, exhausted and depressed, instead of sore, exhausted and feeling like I did something. It’s a huge difference.
It is about smoking, the nicotine addiction, the habit, big tobacco and it’s not. If it isn’t tobacco, it will be something else. If you’re struggling with tobacco, be aware of the disease process and own that you’re going to pay a huge price for a little momentary pleasure. It's important to remember Big Tobacco does not give a holy rat's ass about you. They are not your friends. Be aware that it might be more about something else than simple smoking. Show some courage and just look and see. You don't have to change it if you don't want. You're the one in control. And you're not going to be anybody in the world but exactly who you are whether or not you smoke. But just once you might try to reach out and take your space. Keep going outside to take a smoke break -- just don’t smoke. For Pete’s sake, don’t tell anyone that you’ve quit. Don't tell a living soul. Make everybody think you've got to go out and smoke. Just don't smoke when you get there. Breathe instead. Breathe. Big deep breaths. If you need a screen to hide behind, go find one. But breathe. Breathe and feel the beat of your own heart.
We are all smokers, with our own weird little cigarettes. Legislation is not going to change tobacco use or any other kind of neurotic behavior. It’s like trying to legislate the sun because it causes skin cancer. If you’re truly concerned about someone else’s smoking, just be a friend. Talk about the uncomfortable things. And use that money we’d spend on legislation for our children and our teachers. They need all the help they can get.

Compassion or Murder

by Lyn

I finally came to a decision today, after months of putting it off. I must have my little dog put to sleep and the pain and the frustration with the decision has made me tearful, weepy, frustrated and deeply depressed.

She is an ancient thing for a dog -- 20 years old. She has lost one eye to glaucoma and the other is covered with a cataract. Her hearing has diminished such that I'm fairly certain she can't hear any but the loudest sounds. She has kept a slight ear condition that has resisted treatment for years, and now her balance has been affected, such that she tends, with the one eye, to go in circles. The muscles in one of her back legs has atrophied, and there is spondylosis in her spine that is causing the extensor muscles of her back legs to operate while the contracting muscles do not. She is able to extend her legs, but not pull them back, effectively causing her to have to walk on stilted legs behind. Added to this is a little doggie Alzheimer's which causes her to become confused and disoriented. When all of the conditions are acting together, she walks around and around in circles, becoming frantic, panting madly, running into walls, and falling because her back end goes out on her.

As I write this, I think, how absurd that I should feel badly about putting this dog to sleep. What a selfish person I am to keep her alive, just to ease my pain. And yet, there is that thing about her that she has had all of her life -- this never say die attitude. She never quits and I hate to be the one to make her do so.

I got her 13 years ago. I was a respiratory therapist working at a small hospital in Harrison County, Kentucky, and I passed her on the road on the way to work one morning. She was sitting in the road, I thought for the warmth, as some old dogs will do. It was in the brief flash as I passed her that I noticed the blood. I turned around and went back and walked over to examine her, and that's when I saw what was really going on. She had obviously been hit by a car or worse. Her jaw was fractured, and one eye was hanging out. And she was sitting because she had obviously been hit such that she couldn't walk.

There was no picking her up without getting bit, so I threw a blanket over her and carried her into work with me under the disapproving stares of my co-workers -- that I should bring a dog into the hospital. I put her in my boss's office, prayed I wouldn't be paged, and called the local dog warden. He showed up a little later and took her to the vet. I told him to tell the vet to do what he needed to do (which I thought surely would be to put her to sleep), and to send me the bill.

Several hours later the vet called to ask me what I wanted him to do with the dog. She had a fractured jaw, a dislocated hip, a broken pelvis, and seven broken ribs, but nothing vital had been injured. I was amazed, but told him to "fix" her. It didn't seem right to put her to sleep after surviving that kind of injury. When her owner called later to thank me for rescuing her, she also told me she didn't have the money to pay for the bill, and did I want the dog? So by the end of that day, I was a new dog owner.

I took her home a couple of weeks later not sure if she would ever walk again. I made her comfortable in a box in my bedroom, then joined my roommate to watch TV. Shortly we heard a dragging noise and looked down the hall to find her dragging herself towards the living room. A couple of days later she was walking and within a week she could run enough to enjoy going outside like a normal dog. I re-named Zena, Princess Warrior. I was amazed by her heart.

She was never an affectionate kind of dog. She was a cross between some kind of hound and some kind of terrier and had the spiky hair of a punk rocker that defied brush or comb. The eye that had been knocked out had been put back into place, and was functional, but was now slightly rotated to the outside. Her jaw, which was wired back together, was slightly rotated in the other direction. Hers was truly a face only a mother could love. She was content to be picked up and cuddled only as long as your hand was constantly scratching her or rubbing her. The moment that stopped, she was struggling to be put back down again. She would never lay content, dozing in your lap.

Outside her nose would immediately go to the ground and she was off and running (albeit rather lopsidedly) chasing down a smell and totally impervious to the call of her owner. She had a nose that could smell any kind of food, any where it was. She had no fear when food was concerned. My boyfriend, when cooking out one day, learned to become ever vigilant around her. He had the grill too close to the porch on one occasion, and when he became distracted and turned the other way, she grabbed a 16 oz T-bone steak off the grill and, waving her tail in delight, went bopping off to her lair underneath the porch. Eating was the most important thing in her life, and the very moment she smelled cooking she would bounce about the kitchen voicing a cross between a bay and a bark that could slice through the thickest insulation or consciousness. My father, who was the world's worst at feeding snacks to animals, adored her.

My Dad was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1995. He had complained for months of an aching in his shoulder which his doctor attributed to "Uncle Arthur." Of course, a respiratory therapist could have told him it was an early symptom of lung cancer, and I did, but his particular doctor was old and content in his ways and was not the least bit interested in listening to anyone else, not the least a newly graduated RRT. Finally the cancer was discovered, way too late, and an emergency left lung removal was done. My father, always a tough nut, sailed through the surgery and chemotherapy with no outward affect. However, shortly afterward he developed an aneurysm and had to have surgery for that. Shortly after that it was a hernia operation, which he said was the worst one. By the end of that one he was in severe pain and for the first time in his life, I think, fell deep into depression.

That was when Zena began to shine. She had long realized that Dad was the bearer of such delicious treats as the chips from Long John Silver's fish and chips, or roast leavenings, or slices of country ham fat, pieces of hamburger from Arby's and the coup de foudre, the creme de la creme, the ham bone. All it took was the sound of his truck coming down the driveway, and she was voicing like a bloodhound on the hunt. Dad would make her and Ladybird, our other dog, sit politely and wait for their treats, but Zena, so excited and hungry, would bounce in place. He was tickled. He was charmed. He was enthralled. He was delighted. And once again he began to laugh the laugh I was beginning to think I would never hear again. I watched him watch her as she zig zagged lopsidedly through the tall weeds one day and I could almost hear him say "if she could get through it, so can I." He never complained about the pain again.

She has been to me my little monkey sent from God. Her comical antics, her crooked grin, her lopsided lope all reminders of the cruelty fate can sling at you, but that, with perseverance, can be overcome. Strange to credit such power to a dog, but without her in my life will I begin to falter?

Gretchen Jackson, Barbaro's owner said it so succinctly. The price of love is grief. To have to say goodbye suddenly to someone you love, without warning, is horrible. To have to say goodbye in a slow, painful way is just as bad, if not worse. To have to say goodbye in a clinical, controlled, planned way feels like insanity to me. Yes, she's old, but so am I. Yes, she's lame, but so am I. I have glaucoma, I have inner ear problems. It's altogether likely I could develop Alzheimer's. They would not put me to sleep, because I am human. She is "just" a dog. But in many ways, she has been more human to me than many people I have known.

I prayed to God to help my father die at the end. I prayed for my mother in that way as well. God apparently heard and granted both of those prayers. I have prayed the same for my little dog, but unfortunately, God's grace is not forthcoming this time. And so I must take His place. There's no vital organs affected. Amazingly, there is no heart or lung disease, no diabetes or any of the other arrows of old age. Simple mobility issues and a little confusion. There's times I wish it was cancer or even diabetes. I could act swiftly and easily then. But this is not easy.

When she is frantic and agitated, whirling around her pen, panting like crazy, I say, "No, no, no more. I can't stand it." And when she is asleep, curled into a little spiky ball, snoring softly, paws twitching after dreamy rabbits, again, I say, "No, no, I can't take it." There is no feeling of correctness, of making the right decision, of feeling I've done the best for her. It's a sad, sad thing, and I do not like playing God.

Jumpin' Jack Flash

by Lyn

It was the first anniversary of my father's death and I was on my way home from work, traveling the back roads of Harrison County, and feeling very sad. I spied the Harrison County Animal Shelter on my left in the distance and once again felt the same sadness I felt in passing any animal shelter, thinking of all the animals needing a good home. This afternoon, though, was to be a little different.

As I got closer to the shelter I began to have this "feeling" that I needed to stop there. I can't say where the feeling came from or why, but, at the same time, I noted, I had been looking for a way to commemorate my father's passing and I guess it was this extra added little "umph" that made me pull into the shelter, park, get out and start walking around.

I have friends who go to animal shelters with the express purpose of spending time with the animals, and I think they are God's angels, but personally I find that hard to do myself. I am one of those people who, when walking into a shelter, instantly want to take every living animal inside home with me. Since I can't, I then grieve for hours afterward remembering the hopeful little faces I left behind.

I certainly had no need for another dog - I already had two, plus two horses and five cats. So I'm not exactly sure what I was looking for when I rounded the corner and, amidst all of the dogs who were yelping and jumping against the cages, saw the border collie lying flat down on the concrete, in the middle of his cage. His head was on his paws and a look of utter and woebegone hopelessness covered his face.

I stopped in front of his cage, and amid the chaos of his kennel mates said to him, "Hey feller, what got you landed in here?" He did not even raise his eyes to me. "Come on," I said. "You know I'm talking to you." This was rewarded with a couple of dull thuds of his flowing black tail. I laughed in spite of myself, and persisted, "At least you've got food and shelter." Three more thuds of the tail. I hunched down a little in front of the cage and tried to get him to come over. He pretty much ignored me until my haunches were getting just stiff enough to where I had to stand again, then he slowly got up, stretched and came over to sniff my hand, and looked up at me with the saddest eyes I had ever seen.

It was a couple of days later, adoption papers in hand, when he was leaping for joy at being let out of his cage that I gave him his name, "Jumping Jack Flash."

Jack was a handful from the very start. Headstrong to a fault, he insisted on doing every thing in his own way, only yielding to my authority when all else had failed. We had issues immediately. He threatened to rip my face off when I tried to brush him one day. Being brushed the next day with a muzzle on was the result.

All of our interactions went something like this:
Me-I want you to do this.
Jack-I don't want to do that, I want to do this other thing.
Me-No, I want you to do this.
Jack-What if I do this other thing first?
Me-No, I want you to do this first.
Jack-Well, okay, maybe I'll do that, but I'll stop over here and do something completely different before I come back over and then we can talk about it.

I knew border collies required a lot of attention and work. I knew you essentially had to "work" them to keep them happy and content, as left to their own devices and ignored, they could be very destructive. I had watched all of the border collie agility trials on TV and thought perhaps Jack might become an agility dog and we could have fun attending the amateur trials and such. On our first attempt I asked him to sit. I was encouraged as he sat perfectly, tongue lolling, looking at me with the "what?, what?, what?" face. I showed him the frisbee. "Here Jack, look, this is a frisbee." I was rewarded and excited when he looked at the frisbee with interest and even lifted his haunches off the ground a couple of inches. I threw a frisbee past him and cried "Get it Jack! Get the frisbee!" Jack watched the frisbee fly past him and looked back at me. "Get the frisbee Jack," I repeated. Jack sat perfectly still, panting. I retrieved the frisbee myself, showed it to him again and sailed it past him again. "Get it Jack, get the frisbee!" This time Jack didn't even watch it sail past. Instead he rolled over on his back and let his tongue roll rackishly out of the side of his mouth. I left the frisbee in his area hoping he would develop an interest in it, but he studiously ignored it. Thus it was with balls, chew toys, ropes, etc.

Bobby was intensely aggravated with me for getting Jack. He felt it wasn't fair to our two other dogs, who were smaller, and that Jack wouldn't fit into the program. Jack, though, had other plans regarding him and worked non-stop to make up with him regardless of my husband's disaffection. Bobby, who loves all living things, was soon caught stroking Jack's slick, black head and ears.

"You know Grandma's getting old," I pointed out to him. Grandma was our oldest dog and at 16 years old, was becoming ancient. "Yeah," he muttered. "And you know Grandma's a lot older than Ladybird..." "Yeah," he replied. Ladybird, the other of the two girls, seemed to bond instantly with Jack, especially in regard to bolting out of the house and running through the fields together. "Well, what's going to happen when Grandma's gone?" I asked. "Who is Ladybird going to run with then?" He muttered something unintelligible. "Dogs are pack animals," I said. "They really need that family thing happening." "I know," he said. "He's (referring to Jack) alright I guess."

I found them later, both asleep on the couch, Jack with his head in Bobby's lap.

Jack is a talker. He must have great thoughts, because he will, all of a sudden, come up to me, sit down in front of me and proceed to "tell" me something of great importance. He will not utter a decent, full-throated bark, but instead will whine, yip, dance and then do alternating combinations of the above. Sometimes I can figure it out - maybe he wants out, he needs to pee, or he wants a treat, but most of the time it's Greek (or dog) to me.

The early wee hours of April Fool's Day, we were sleeping the sleep of the exhausted. My mother had passed away a month earlier, and the night before we had lost a dear friend in an auto accident, so we were dull with grief when we stumbled into bed and instantly fell asleep. It was a couple of hours later that I awoke to hear Jack talking to me. He was not just talking. He was jumping against the bed, actually shaking it, and jumping on and off the bed, painfully stepping on my stomach and legs. I awoke up crying "Ow, ow, ow," into a dense fogginess where I could barely hear what I thought was Bobby's cell phone alarm going off. I turned over groggily and shook him awake, muttering "Turn off your #!?!# phone!!," then fell back asleep, vaguely feeling him leave the bed.

Seconds later he was back, pulling at my arm, shouting, "Get up, the house is on fire!"

The word "house," in this particular case, is a bit of a misnomer as our house was actually a 30 year old mobile home way out in the country. We all know the statistics re: rural mobile home fires - I believe the current time is about 5 to 8 minutes for it to burn completely to the ground. Also most mobile homes, and especially the older ones, are constructed of horrific volatile chemical compounds, from the paneling to the flooring, resulting in a noxious black smoke when it burns. Needless to say I was awake in an instant and ran into the hallway only to see the kitchen nearly engulfed. Everything after that was blur. I remember grabbing animals, stuffing them under my arms and then into the cab of our truck. I made the foolish mistake of going in a second time to grab my beloved guitars and throw, yes throw, them out the door. I made the foolish mistake of going in a third time to turn the power off, this time not without consequence. I could feel myself starting to go down and just managed to crawl back outside again coughing and hacking for my very life. Somehow Bobby had found a water hose and had it turned on the fire and all the area around it, trying to wet it down so it couldn't burn. He was cussing fluently and shouting his defiance to the fire gods. Through the flames and the smoke I could see a familiar black form shadowing his every footstep, yipping and whining in chorus. Jack was not going to let him fight that fire alone.

An hour later the firefighters were there, I was being given smoke inhalation treatments and the kitchen was a rancid, smelly, smoking, soaked ruin. Bobby was talking with the firefighters who were congratulating him on doing the impossible -- the unbelievable accomplishment of actually putting a mobile home fire out and saving most of it. Jack was going back and forth between Bob, the firefighters and myself, poking his cold nose into and underneath our hands.

Jack still gets muzzled when we groom him or clip his toenails - something that he still cries like a baby or growls like a rabid wolf over. But he gets away with a lot. I'm left with some questions about that awful April Fool's Day. How did Jack know to try to wake me instead of Bobby, who sleeps like a log? Why was I prompted to stop in at the dog shelter in the first place? I'll never know the answers, but I know I'll always be grateful to a pound puppy named Jumping Jack Flash.