A Tease Of Spring

Yesterday it was 80 degrees here ... a welcome hint of spring. I spent several hours outside doing garden work.

Last year I felt like I hadn't gotten anything done, as the areas I worked on really didn't look like much throughout the summer. But yesterday, when I began cleaning those areas up and getting them ready to plant, I was able to see just how much I did get accomplished last year in prepping these areas for future use, because it's all starting to come together exactly as I hoped. This year I didn't have to do a ton of work to ready them - just rake out some dead leaves, and lay out some soaker hose. So when the plants are available, I'm ready to go get them and plant.

I did have to fix the one (store-bought) rain barrel but that was because it was bought late last year and never really fixed then. I bought the one decorative rain barrel because it was in a more visible location, and I wanted that one to look nice. But it's a bad design, where the hose running from the barrel to the downspout has to be exactly level to work. When I set it up last year I didn't get it exactly level, so what happened was that the water would run in to the barrel, but it wouldn't drain back into the downspout when it was full; so the first time it got full, it overflowed around the lid, flooding the flower bed. I unhooked it and never used it the rest of the year.

Yesterday I finally leveled it completely, so now it ought to work fine throughout the season. I also laid out the soaker hose in that bed, staking it down with little tent stake like things that actually came with our Christmas yard decorations to hold them in place.


The section in the back (behind the scraggly looking azaleas) is still not staked because I don't know exactly what I'm planting back there yet, so I needed to leave it until stuff's planted. Then I can loop the hose around the base of the plants and stake it down. I may mulch as well, which will help bury / cover up the soaker hose, though it doesn't really matter - once the plants get thick and lush they will mostly hide it.

I have to split that hose in two at one point and put an on/off valve in it. In this flower bed, the stuff from the azaleas forward will get rain when it does rain. But I plan to plant things behind the azaleas, and those things will be completely under the awning, and never get any rain. So they will need watered more often, even if we're getting good rain they will need watered. But I can't just turn on the soaker hose and water the whole bed if there's been plenty of rain or I'll wash out the front. So I'm going to divide the hose and put an on/off valve in at the awning line. Then I can shut off the bottom half of the hose and only water the back of the bed when necessary, or open the valve and water the whole bed if we haven't had enough rain.

My other project is a little more involved. I want two more rain barrels for the other area. I had one last year, and we used it, but it would get used up too fast - one good deep watering of that flower bed and it would be empty. Then if it didn't rain for awhile, it wasn't getting refilled. Of course, it was taking so much water because that planting bed is entirely under the awning, so got no rain at all, and needed more frequent deep watering. I'm thinking about doing away with that this year, but more on that in a minute.

But the rain barrel did work so well that during even one good rain it would fill up completely, long before it stopped raining, letting the rest of the precious rainwater go down the drain - so I knew that adding two more, they would also be easily filled during any good rains, giving me 3 times as much backup water before worrying about it raining again.

But I've been to the place where we got this one several times, and they are out of these barrels, and don't know when they'll get them in. I'd like two of these because they're only $15 a piece (whereas I paid about $100 for the 'fancy' one).

One big thing I accomplished yesterday was removing a shrub that was right in front of last year's rain barrel. It was really seriously in the way for adding any more rain barrels over there, but I had balked about taking it out last year because I thought I was going to have to kill it - that's how I had to get the others out that I removed, cutting off all their branches first to leave just the stump, then digging and dragging that out of the ground. I really hated to kill any more shrubs. In a brief burst of energy yesterday, I tackled that shrub, and managed to dig it out. So I moved it around to the side of the house. Greg had to help me replant it, as I couldn't get the hole dug out quite deep enough. But that's a huge relief, not having that shrub in the way. Later this spring I'll remove the other one, and that whole area will finally be ready to finish.


The plans for that corner are to add two more rain barrels, but there's some work that needs done there first. We get a lot of rain overrunning from the roof in that corner, and I want to grade that corner better, piling up dirt higher against the foundation and sloping it away from the house. Once I do that, I have to figure out a way to get three rain barrels into that corner, level ... some kind of little leveled platforms stuck into the grade mound, I'm thinking. Those 3 barrels are going to take up a huge portion of that corner, and with the difficulty keeping that area watered since it's under the awning, I'm thinking about not trying to turn this into such a flower bed after all, and use it as more of a utility area. I already have a few things planted there from last year (some of which are starting to come up) - a fern, a bleeding heart, and a couple hostas - which I may be moving them somewhere else.

Anyway - it was good to be out in the gardens yesterday. I'm extremely bummed that after today the temperature's supposed to drop again for some time. I'm really ready for it to get warm and stay warm.

Sigh.

There's no good segue from that last post, but I guess I have to do something, to keep posting here.

It's been rough. I've been mostly keeping it to myself, outwardly managing what appears to be a normal existence. Mostly I've been doing a whole lot of distracting myself. But more on that another time.

Today is supposed to be the warmest day of the year so far, in the high 70s. I'm waiting for it, as it was cold when I woke up, and I've been chilled ever since. We're supposed to clean out the garage today. Yay. But it needs done.

Well, that's enough for now.

R.I.P. Tyler

Tyler

11.20.94 ~ 3.27.11

The best dog in the world, paws down. And most
people who knew you already agree.

Tyler, you took a large piece of my soul
with you today, but that's okay -
it's yours, you can keep it.

Tyler Update

Well, things are progressing steadily to shit.

Two weeks ago Tyler was supposed to have surgery, but the surgeon, after examining him, called me and said he didn't think it was a productive idea, so I picked Tyler up and took him home. The surgeon, however, said he'd consult with an oncologist and let me know if there was anything else that might help.

He didn't get back to me until last Thursday. Then he sounded encouraged, as he said the oncologist had reported to him that surgery often does help in this type of cancer (they're assuming it's a salivary gland cancer, due to it's location and symptoms, though the biopsy itself was inconclusive as to the specific type). So the surgeon decided that surgery was back on the menu for possible treatments. He wasn't available last Friday, so it was scheduled for this Friday.

But in the meantime, the lump had changed - it had gotten bigger, and kind of weirder - I didn't know how else to explain that, but it'll make sense in a minute.

The vet who first diagnosed him with cancer, "Dr. Brenda", wasn't the one who was going to do the surgery. But she was much easier to talk to (the surgeon often confused me, as he had a weird habit of talking in circles, saying contradictory things, and not making any sense to me). So I had decided that before the surgery, I wanted another appointment with Dr. Brenda to get some questions answered (with a straight answer rather than a circular one) and make the best decision.

That appointment was tonight. She examined Tyler with grim results. The tumor had not only grown, but it had "solidified" - what I had called "gotten weirder" - the way she explained it was, before, it was kind of wobbly and not that firmly attached to anything - implying what she thought was a reasonably decent chance of removing most of it. But now it's much more solid - it's just a big solid mass in his neck now, as opposed to a wobbly marble-shaped thing like it was a few weeks ago - which indicates to her that it's more entrenched into the deep soft tissue of the neck, embedded around the jugular and other veins and nerves in that area - which made the likelihood of successfully removing any significant portion of it much smaller. Also, with that enlarged lymph node in Tyler's shoulder, that meant it had spread. And, with all of this happening in the time frame it did, it indicated the cancer had gotten extremely aggressive.

All of this led Dr. Brenda to believe - when I pushed her for a blunt assessment - that surgery really wouldn't accomplish anything. It might buy at most a few weeks, but Tyler would be at great risk in this surgery, and I knew from personal experience that he'd probably have a very rough recovery. (Even though his eye surgery went extremely well from a medical standpoint, he did have a tough and disorienting recovery from that).

To buy a few weeks, but have Tyler suffering, it wasn't worth it. Right now he still feels good. Just last Sunday when I had him outside, he was running through the yard. Not fast, but running. He felt so good we went for a walk down the block, and he really enjoyed it - trotting, taking side trips to check out interesting scents ... he had a really good day.

I wasn't much surprised by Dr. Brenda's assessment, as I'd already kind of had a gut feeling that this surgery wasn't a good idea and wasn't going to happen. I was tempted to bitch that if the surgeon had done the surgery two weeks ago, things would be different, but I have the deep feeling that's not true. Things had already begun progressing (there was that should lymph node thing even then), and the surgeon had told me even then that he didn't believe he could remove it all. If it was being this aggressive, then taking out only a portion of it wouldn't have really solved anything, but would have made Tyler miserable, subjecting him to the dangers of surgery and a difficult recovery to buy - what - maybe a couple of weeks? Not worth it. Like I said, he's been feeling good the last two weeks. He wouldn't have had that if he'd had the surgery.

So I think that really, not doing the surgery is the best thing for him, ultimately. It was no cure, but just something to buy time ... but at the cost, not time of any value for him.

Then I pressed Dr. Brenda for a time frame, how this is going to progress and what I can expect - and she told me the bad news. She said we're looking at probably a few weeks to a month or so. That's it.

I held up really well until she said "Now is the time to just spoil him, feed him whatever he wants, and just love on him." Well, I can do that.

She did give me a prescription for a medication (I have to get at a regular pharmacy) which is a high-dosage aggressive treatment drug - it won't cure him, but it will help keep things comfortable for as long as possible. (That's what gets us maybe a month instead of, like, 2 weeks - I'll take it as long as he's feeling okay).

So, that's where things are. I'm pretty heartbroken, but at the moment I'm relatively calm. (well ... relatively ... ). I'm sure I'll be a wreck later, but for now, I have a direction and a goal - spoil the hell out of Tyler. So that's what I'm doing. A plan, any plan, does help.

No Good News

Originally the vet that examined Tyler suggested we start with surgery to remove the tumor - she believed it could potentially all be removed, and that it would give him immediate relief as far as the difficulty in swallowing. Then we'd see about chemo or radiation. That surgery was scheduled for yesterday.

But yesterday, about half an hour after I dropped him off, the surgeon called. He had not previously examined Tyler, and when he did, he said it was his belief the tumor went much deeper than originally thought, that it was probably well into the deep tissue around Tyler's esophagus, and that he would not be able to remove anywhere near all of it. He would not be able to remove the part that was causing difficulty swallowing, so that problem would remain. Also, he found a lymph node near Tyler's shoulder that was enlarged, and if the cancer had moved into the lymph nodes, it made surgery that much less likely to really do any good.

For those reasons, he didn't recommend subjecting Tyler to the difficulty and risk of the surgery, so we didn't proceed with that.

After spending several long minutes telling me how these things usually don't have any good outcome, how often when treatment is pursued it just makes things worse, the surgeon then kind of turned the conversation a bit sideways and said that he'd consult with another oncologist and let me know whether they thought this would respond, even just on a short term basis, to any chemo or radiation. His take seemed to be that it would not, so I'm unsure why he basically volunteered that route at all, but ... since it's not changing, hurting, or delaying anything good, I'm willing to at least ask. I mean, the alternative is to do nothing, which is what we're doing while we wait anyway, so it doesn't change anything.

Unfortunately, I do not believe this is going to have any good outcome. I don't think, from what they're telling me, that any chemo or radiation is really going to help. I never intended to put Tyler through any procedures that would be uncomfortable or make him sick or miserable, only to maybe add a few weeks to his life. I'm not of the mind set to "drag this on at all costs." I would be, as I desperately don't want to let him go - but for the fact that I don't want him to be sick and miserable and uncomfortable. I can't do that to him.

He had to come off his prednisone a couple days before the surgery, and I saw how miserable he was - weak, shaking, not eating. I told them yesterday, if I'm going to bring him home to wait to hear from this oncologist, he has to have something to make him feel better. They've put him on a pain medication which did help a lot. He was more like his old self last night, following us around, interested in what was going on around him, and he ate well.

I know that status quo won't maintain for long, but I have no idea how long. I haven't talked to them yet about whether they have any idea how this is going to develop, but it does seem things are moving much more quickly than they were ... I mean, if this started way last summer and took this long to even develop enough to be noticeable, but then in just two weeks he went from no lump, to a big lump, that has grown even more in two weeks, and then lymph nodes showing up involved - it sounds like it's not taking it's time anymore.

It's just a crazy-making kind of situation at this point. It really, really, really sucks.

Tyler

It's a sad weekend around here. Got some bad news about Tyler. He has cancer. Well, here's the story and what's next.

You may recall that late last summer he was having problems swallowing, and was choking when he ate or drank water. One vet told me it was nothing serious, and to just raise his food and water dishes - which initially helped, so I thought he'd be fine. The problem returned around the same time his eye problem ramped up, but I was so much more focused on that, that I didn't pay much attention to the swallowing problem.

After he'd recovered from his eye surgery, I took him to another vet, which I'd actually planned several months before - a holistic vet in Beaver, PA, who I hoped to get better advice from for taking good care of him in these late years, making sure his home-cooked diet was up to par, etc.

Well, this moron took one look at Tyler's age and said there was nothing he could do for him. He told me his heart murmur was so bad that he'd probably be in heart failure by the end of the year, and he basically wrote him off.

I was sad, but didn't know what to do, so I took Tyler home and didn't initially do anything.

Because of what I learned after the fact is why I say the guy was a moron who ripped me off. He was wrong about there being nothing to do, and wrong about Tyler's heart murmur. But don't get me started on that asshole.

From October until the end of December, Tyler had more and more problems eating, and ate less and less, until he'd lost so much weight he was literally just skin and bones. I finally said, screw this "nothing can be done" - at this rate he's going to starve to death. So I took him to another local vet who many people I know speak very highly of.

So the new vet said "Well, we could certainly at least take an x-ray and see if we can see what's going on in there." I kind of kicked myself for not trying that sooner, rather than listening to that moron, holistic vet, but again ... I don't know, when a vet - a specialist that you pay a lot of money to go see tells you something, I guess it's understandable to believe it.

So anyway, the new vet took an x-ray and said she didn't see anything wrong. She suggested it might be some type of auto-immune problem, and said we could try a round of prednisone. I agreed - I'd try anything at that point. We also supplemented his food with some canned high-calorie prescription food to help him gain weight. I started feeding him 3 or 4 times a day. And his 'regular food,' I started chopping up real fine in a food processor and coating with melted butter - in part to make it easier to swallow, and in part to help him gain some weight.

I also started sitting on the floor with him, and holding his food bowl up in front of his face at a steep angle, so that he barely had to move his head from a 'normal' position to eat. This helped two ways - he choked a lot less with his bowl held like that, and I could encourage him to keep eating when he tried to stop. It worked really well, and he quickly began gaining weight. By the end of a couple weeks, I was able to go back to putting his food bowl in his feeder (raised, and propped at an angle on a blanket) and he'd eat on his own. His appetite was great then, and he'd eagerly eat 3 or 4 meals a day, with no problem. He also almost completely stopped choking at all, whether when he ate or drank water.

It was almost like he was cured, he was really on the mend, and I was relieved. I realized that was the best he'd been since last summer before his eye problem went all pear-shaped, and thought we'd finally made it out of the woods and got a break.

Tuesday when I came home from work he had a big swelling or lump under the left side of his jaw. Initially I didn't think much about it, just thought he had an infection or something. Took him back to the vet Wednesday, she was concerned, did a biopsy, and - it's cancer.

It's been an emotional weekend, but here's where I'm at for the moment (which is subject to change). I had several long talks with the vet about this. I told her I want to aggressively treat it to the point that it has any hope of serving any purpose ... but I don't want to subject Tyler to any treatment that's going to make him miserable and sick, to maybe effect no change at all, or something that will only last a couple weeks.

She was totally cool about it, very understanding. She completely supported my position (none of that "he's old, just forget about it" BS I've gotten from other vets). When I explained that I understand that when a dog's 16 years old, any talk of "long term prognosis" is kind of pointless, she put it this way. What's the life expectancy of a 16 year old dog with no major health problems? Maybe a year or so (average; of course some dogs live longer, but most don't make it to 16, so it was a bit of a generalization, but I get the point). What's the prognosis of a 16 year old dog with cancer who undergoes viable treatment? Maybe a year. But without treatment? Far, far less.

So it seemed reasonable to me - and the vet agreed - to pursue some early treatment now. She did explain, and I understand, that this is no 'cure' - it's to buy time, that's it. But I'll take that - as long as he's comfortable and it's not making him feel worse.

So the first course of action is surgery (next Friday) to remove this big lump in his neck. That will create some immediate relief and get rid of that mess, anyway. But she assured me I can assume that's not "all there is" and that something will turn up somewhere else, in time.

The second step is to treat him with drug therapy. She is unfamiliar with this particular type of cancer (it's kind of uncommon, though not rare) - but that didn't bother me because she was open enough to admit that, and told me over the next few days she'd be researching it to see whether it responds to chemotherapy, or what kind of drug protocol it might respond to. She also told me she'd be consulting with all the vets in the office, the newer vets with the 'fresh out of medical school' latest information, and the older, "experience from the trenches" vets who may have dealt with this type of thing many times before. I thought that was pretty damned cool, that they're willing to put their heads together and come up with the best treatment course for Tyler.

If there's a chemo protocol, they'll try it. She told me chemo is different in animals - it doesn't make them sick or weak or cause their hair to fall out. Basically there are no real side effects from it. This is because in animals, they don't give chemo 'full bore' - in mega high doses like they do in people. She didn't go into details, and I didn't care, but I suspect this has to do with the way dogs age and metabolize - everything is 'sped up' in dogs, like how you've always heard that every year of a dog's life is like 7 in humans, so a 10 year old dog is like 70. That's not quite accurate, as they've adjusted those scales somewhat, but you get the gist.

Anyway - if there is no chemo protocol, there's another drug she wants to try. I believe it's called Rimadyl - it's a human arthritis drug that she said has shown amazing abilities to shrink and even kill cancer tumors in dogs.

So ... that's the plan for now. Surgery to remove the worst of the mess physically, then drug therapy to hope to contain it for awhile ... to buy some time (hopefully quality time) ... and just take it one day at a time.

I'm very, very sad, but there's one thing that makes this somewhat bearable. With Tyler being 16, of course I've known for awhile it was 'only a matter of time.' And as she pointed out, even without this happening, his life expectancy might have not been much more than a year or so. If I can get through the summer, then ... I guess how I want to say this is, we may not have lost much from him getting cancer, it may be that what time we get would have been about all we had anyway. So ... that does help it not seem quite so devastating.

But the hard part is knowing. When nothing specific was wrong, though I knew he was old, I could kind of ignore it and just not think about it. Now, with this diagnosis, it's like a ticking time bomb I can hear all the time.

For his part, Tyler seems to be doing okay. He's still eating well, still not choking on his food, has a decent amount of energy - once in awhile when we're outside, he even gives a little hop and takes off running. He did that to me the other day and I wasn't expecting it, and he was headed straight for a tree - I had to rein him in just to keep him from running into the tree. ;o) So ... that kind of thing is what makes me want to keep on keeping on, at least for awhile.

I'd at least like to get well into summer - Tyler likes being outside and going for walks, and it's been a miserable winter with it being so cold and snowy, and him cooped up inside and not getting to do anything fun at all. If we can get into summer, he can enjoy being outside and going for walks again. I'd like to see that.

And on that note, I guess I'll keep you posted.

I Have Molding!

My new scheme is working ... the dining room molding is finally done!!



(The last wall wasn't finished yet when I took this picture, but it is now - it's all up!)


Well, mostly done. I'm marking it 98% in my little status section in the side-bar, because technically I have a couple things to do - go around and dab paint over the nails, and patch the few little gaps with spackling and paint that. But it's going to be simple, and basically it's all up, so ... I have molding.

I cannot get over how awesome this looks. Better even than I expected. I'm incredibly impressed with it. The center squares weren't just an artsy touch - they were also practical.


I can't remember the details now (it's been so long since we first got the stuff to do this), but there was some issue with the length of the stock molding, and of the walls, that was creating some problem I didn't like ... but we discovered that using these squares, we could cut the stock molding exactly in half (which we did at the store), and that combined with the squares was the exact right length (with a little 1/4" trimming here or there) without having to piece the molding mid-wall.

But practical or not, I love the way they look. I intended to paint decorative compass roses on each one, but never got around to it when I decided the molding was going up today, or I was going to die attempting it. I figured I can do it later ... it'll be harder painting them on the wall, but not impossible. Hey ... if Michaelangelo could paint a ceiling ... .

The little corner pieces are a little funkier, not exactly how I envisioned things (also chosen so we didn't have to try to miter corners). You can't really see them well in the other pictures, but they are just decorative corner pieces with a fancy bit at the top (which is the little bit we left sticking up above the molding).


It seemed better in theory than in practice - as you can tell by this picture, they don't look so bad close up, but from the general view out in the room, they just kind of get lost and look a little weird. Probably they would have needed to be bigger to have looked proper.

But that's okay, I came up with a grand plan for them as well. Now that I'm getting into clay sculpture, I'm going to (eventually) sculpt ship figureheads for each corner - small, scaled to fit appropriately in that space - and cover those corner pieces with them. It'll look cool, and go perfectly with the 'seaside cottage' theme we're working on here.

The scheme that got me to this point was a rearrangement of the use of my time. Usually on Saturdays I sleep in (even if it's only 8:30 or 9:00, I don't set an alarm), then I sit around for several hours doing nothing (i.e., messing around online and drinking coffee), then I go to the grocery store, and usually run some errands, and by the time I get home for the day it's 2:00 or later and I'm tired, and band practice is in a few hours, and I don't feel like starting on a home project.

And rightly so, as this took far longer than I thought it would. About 4 hours. But consequently, nothing ever gets done.

I was sick to death of stuff not getting done, and devised a new plan. Now I get up really early Saturday morning - 6:00 a.m., the same time I get up during the week - and I get my ass out to the grocery store early (this morning, by 8:00). Then I'm home early enough to still have time to tackle my home improvement projects.

This is the only way I'll ever get anything done, because Saturday is the only day I have for these types of projects - I refuse to do this stuff on Sunday, Sunday is my R&R and "me" day - for sewing, clay, whatever fun and creative project I want to work on. It could be argued that doing this stuff is fun and creative too, but ... for some reason, despite how much I want to do these things, how much I enjoy fixing up the house, I still consider them 'work.' So, they don't fall into the proper category for Sunday. Sunday is a 'no work' day, just because everyone needs one of those a week.

But Saturday is also the only day I care to go to the grocery store, as I detest going on weeknights after work.

So ... starting my day earlier is the only way to fit them both in, but it worked like a charm this week. If I can keep this up, I should start making progress on more projects. I don't really mind the sacrifice of another couple hours of sleep or "sitting around" time because it came down to a matter of choices ... if I want to get these things done, I have to make them a priority, make time to do them, and just do it. If I want to sleep in and sit around for hours on Saturday morning, then ... nothing's going to get done. Can't have it both ways. So it's a worthwhile trade-off.

Next phase on the dining room: paint the dark wood paneling in the doorway to the kitchen and the 'tween' (that window between the kitchen and dining room) and replace the edge molding on those. And paint the ceiling. Then - or concurrently - I'll work on that stupid window between the dining room and the spare room, and put up the coat hook rack on the wall by the door.