If I could do it over again I would have asked them to remove it last year, because when they removed it they discovered it had infiltrated the muscles under her arm and were not able to entirely excise it. Still, they took ~3 pounds and the overwhelming majority out. The hope now is that it won’t recur. The infiltration of the muscle works against this unfortunately, but the odds aren’t terrible (~40% is what google tells me) and even if it does, hopefully it will grow at a slower pace.

By and large her recovery from the surgery has been messy and unpleasant for her but relatively smooth. She has staples along an incision that runs from her armpit to her navel, and she had two drains installed which protected her from too much fluid collecting in the void left by the excised tumor. I had to apply hot compresses twice a day to the region and keep her dressed in a tshirt to help corral the bleeding. Her first day she barely moved and was in obvious discomfort (and on painkillers to help with it) but by the second day she was starting to perk up and move about, and seemed even better on the third day. Unfortunately she had a relapse possibly caused by us letting her go for too long of a walk that began on the 4th day and had her bleeding fairly heavily at times and again becoming immobile with discomfort. This lasted a couple of days. She had her drains removed last night and seems to be doing well – she tried to roll around in the leaves this morning when I took her out, throughout it all her appetite has been strong, and she’s starting to show signs of her normal playfulness. I’m fairly optimistic at this point. She’s still leaking from the areas where the drains were, but the flow is significantly less.

So…could have been better, but could have been much much worse, so all things considered I’m thankful that it’s looking good, and she handled it well throughout. I’ll post a few pics to the gallery with the warning that a couple of them might be disturbing.

my dog Soolin leaping into the pool

this despite the fact that she’s got arthritic hips so creaky she sometimes has trouble making it up stairs, and a fat deposit under her front right armpit that causes her gait to be way out of whack*. So you get the full picture, here’s her sticking the landing:

spalasssh!

and paddling immediately on over to retrieve the tennis ball:

paddling over to her ball

so, that’s the good news. My dog is fricking cool and possessed of an indomitable will to enjoy herself. The bad news? She pays the price:

This is after it had healed a bit. It got her on both sides, her neck, and her back.

She got hotspots so badly on her cheeks that we had to pay the vet to shave her for us – she wouldn’t let us near them because they were so uncomfortable. She was diagnosed with a yeast infection in both ears at the same time. All told she’s on two oral medications, some goop that goes in her ears twice a day, and a topical spray that goes on the wounds 3 times a day.

My poor, fabulous, glorious Soolin. There’s no stopping her no matter the consequences.

*(she’s going in for surgery to have that removed sometime in the next month or so)

The hospital’s first guess was a possible blockage of her innards, most likely by chicken bone. Fortunately shortly after they admitted her she got violently ill from the rear, and at the time they thought this was a great sign and that she would soon be on the mend. They x-rayed her and found nothing foreign in her, which was a relief and another good sign.

Unfortunately by Tuesday she hadn’t really improved, and they decided to keep her for observation. She wasn’t eating, and she was still throwing up and leaking from her rear constantly. By this point they concluded she had a bacterial infection of some sort. We were worried but not terribly so.

Wednesday morning Nori ate a little bit and so by lunchtime they concluded it was safe to take her home. Susan picked her up and spent the afternoon watching her, and it wasn’t pretty. She wouldn’t eat, she was still constantly and pretty much uncontrollably leaking from the rear, she was in significant pain that was causing her to constantly pant and quake, and she was completely distressed emotionally. This was really really hard to see and absolutely heartbreaking. She was looking for comfort and spent her time trying to literally crawl under our clothing and huddle against our skin, shivering in pain and staring up at us with pleading eyes. The closest I’ve come to crying in years was that night, looking into her eyes and feeling helpless. At this point I was beginning to think she would die, and the following morning was worse – while she did seem to sleep that night, when she woke up she wouldn’t eat anything, and after drinking a little water she threw it up all over Susan. We called the hospital and they had us bring her back.

This time they did an ultrasound and again found no blockage. They concluded their initial diagnosis was still the likeliest explanation, she was just sicker than we thought, but the ultrasound did pick up fluid in her abdominal cavity. Apparently this is not unusual with bad digestive infections, but it’s also a sign of certain cancers, so they sent a sample to the lab. Meanwhile she went back on the IV and Susan and I sat on pins and needles, getting an update from the doctors every 6 hours or so.

Thursday was status quo until the evening when Nori finally ate something after 4 days of eating basically nothing, which was a great sign, and Friday morning she ate again. They decided if she ate around lunchtime we could come get her, and after she did I went up late afternoon and got her.

It was like night and day. While she had clearly lost a fair bit of weight, and has a shaved belly and rear end (a rear end that looked ridiculous when I first got her – it was literally as red as a baboons ass), she is back to her peppy self – no more pleading eyes, a not infrequent grin to share, energy to bounce around the house and, most importantly for Nori, beg us for food

So – she’s not entirely out of the woods (5 days of a diet of small portions of rice and boiled meat, a bunch of different medications, low activity), but things are definitely looking good. The lab results came back and there was no sign of cancer. Our fingers crossed that she comes through this just fine and with no lasting side effects, except perhaps more of an aversion to food from the trash/wherever the hell she found those mashed potatoes and chicken.

As a side note, we do wish we had health insurance on the dogs. This was expensive, owe $2k and we’re not quite done yet. I’d spend the money again without thinking twice, but man, it still hurts the wallet. This has been the most expensive month of my life, what with a new house, appliances, a tractor, and this being the capper. I told Susan we’re going to rent Nori out as a ‘companion’ to the neighborhood dogs to help pay for all of this l-)

The diet and exercise resolution has turned out to be easy thanks to the bout of pneumonia. My weight had been creeping up and by this fall I was over 180 for the first time in a number of years, something I had begun to worry about. Stomach issues and a generally slacker attitude to exercise had me off my regimen for almost all of the summer and fall, so I figured, time for a new years resolution to address it. Pressures off now though – I’m down under 170 for the first time in at least 4-5 years. I just need to keep it off. As soon as my stamina is back it’s back on the exercise regimen, possibly adding in running, which I haven’t done regularly since I left Maine.

The second resolution is inspired by a successful resolution from years ago. At that time I had gotten addicted to buying books off of Abe books, ebay, and Amazon, and my to-read pile was growing faster than my read pile was decreasing. I resolved to only buy a book after I had finished at least one, and to generally focus on bringing down the number of books in the to-read pile. It worked. I still have a huge to-read pile (>20 books) but it no longer grows and it’s no longer close to 100 books. This year I’m applying these principles to videogames, because my to-play pile is like 15 games at this point and maybe higher. I’ve resolved to not buy a new game unless I finish one, and to focus on finishing off games I’ve left partially completed. I have this terrible habit of starting whatever new game I acquire, playing it obsessively for a week or two until the next game comes, then moving on, rarely finishing anything. No more! I’m working my way through games at a rapid clip, and not opening anything still in the shrinkwrap until I knock games off the list. So far it’s working – I’ve finished 4-5 games since the year began, and this was with me unable to play games for two weeks thanks to the pneumonia.

I’m such a hopeless nerd.

I’ve also put myself on a budget. Mint.com rocks for helping you see where you spend your money. I spend too much of mine on games, and that’s stopping as well.

Anyway, to sum up a rambling post, figure on a lot of  ‘Game finished’ posts from me, especially over the next couple of months, as I focus on a game at a time instead of flitting from game to game.

Monadnock and the forest floor from the Pisgah ridgeline

All in all we had a fantastic day. The only downers were Soolin, who had to hike with her lead on because of her still-healing hotspot from last weekend, and my sore body which apparently wasn’t quite recovered from last week’s adventure. By the time we got to the car my ankle was super sore.

trail map and links to a gallery of pictures below. One note on the trail map – it’s slightly inaccurate because I had to manually edit the trailmap. If anything, the hike was a bit longer on the southern end of the trail than is represented below because the gps lost signal for a bit while we were in the deep forest towards the SW end of the trail.

Trail Map

Image gallery

You can checkout the image gallery here. Below is a sample image to give you a sense of it:

Beautiful fall colors starting to peak through around a pond on the forest floor

Ironically, just as mainstream science seems to be catching up to where I was 5 years ago, it’s also starting to conclude that sugar management is not the highest priority, at least not later in life – cholesterol and blood pressure is where the focus should be. My reading of this is that for the medium term, I’m still good to go with my current strategy. I’ll confess though – I’m starting to think I need to cave in and begin taking a statin of some kind. My cholesterol numbers have never been good, despite trying a huge variety of things to balance them over the last 5 years. I’ve avoided statins because when they first put me on them I had huge pain issues, to the point where I was waking up in the middle of the night shouting in pain. Also statins have become like aspirin – physicians are prescribing them at the drop of the hat for a ever broadening definition of who needs them. This has left me feeling like big money pharma is what is pushing the statin use, not actual health issues. I don’t know where I’ll end up on this, my guess though is I’ll try some statin this year to see how things go.

Related links

• Low-Carb Diet Causes Memory Loss
• Low Carb Diet Is Bad For Thinking And Memory
• Low carb diets ‘can cause memory loss’

Susan’s a member of a local CSA farm, and she often picks up celeriac, which I’d never had until a month or so ago. Celeriac is the root of a particular kind of celery plant. It looks like a very large gnurled potato, but it has almost no starch content so it’s perfect for diabetics. You can prepare it much like you would prepare mashed potatoes, or you can dice it and steam, boil. or stirfry it and serve it as a side vegetable with your dinner. It’s great! It has a very mild celery taste, it’s versatile, and when you can find it it’s dirt cheap. Definitely worth trying if you’re looking to add some healthy variety to your diet.

I should note I’m not really sure what to make of all of this. I read an analysis in the last couple of months that suggested the food supply has actually never been safer, it’s just that regional threats like ecoli outbreaks get more widely reported than in the past. At the same time though there’s overwhelming evidence that the Bush administration systematically went after regulatory systems, and it’s not clear to me what impact that had at the FDA and other government inspection and regulatory bodies that oversee the food supply. It seems better to be prudent than sick is what I guess it boils down to.

Fortunately Susan and I eat pretty danged healthy and we don’t eat all that much processed food, so here’s hoping our exposure to risk is as minimal as it seems.

The good news: no cavities. Brushing and flossing plus some help from genetics seem to have protected my teeth over the years, which I was greatly relieved about. The bad news: I have gum disease and have to go in for some serious under gum cleansing procedures which will apparently be pretty unpleasant. Once that’s done I have to go to the dentist every three months for a couple of years for followup cleanings which should entirely clear up the gum issues and protect my teeth for the long term.

The other good news is that the stains will all come off, and the dentist thinks I should consider a bleach treatment for them once the cleaning is finished, which should remove the yellow coloration. He also thinks I should get braces to fix my front teeth. I’m not sure on the braces but I’ll probably do the bleach treatment next spring since it seems to mean so much to Susan.

Anyway I’m not sure if there are any lessons learned. I avoided a decade of the discomfort of the dentists chair with seemingly little consequence, though I’ll reserve judgement and possibly sing a different tune after I’ve been through a couple of these undergum cleansing treatments.

The article’s over here, for those who are curious.

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This looked much worse on Tuesday and Wednesday last week. It’s the largest part of a hotspot that formed as part of a rash she developed across the whole upper half of her torso and extending in small patches across her entire body. I brought her into the vet in a panic about this on Tuesday and discovered not only did she have this rash and hotspot, she had a urinary tract infection, a yeast infection in her ears, and Lymes disease (again). I went from the weekend, with what I thought was a happy healthy dog, splashing around in the river in the dog park, to the unhappiest, unhealthiest Soolin I’ve seen. It was really heartbreaking to see. She’s normally always got this happy go lucky grin on, and Monday and Tuesday that was nowhere to be seen, her tail was tucked completely under her rear, and she was moping around with her head hung low.

So, that’s the bad news. The good news is that so far she seems to be making a good recovery. The cheek outbreak is already looking tons better, it’s no longer weeping constantly, she’s often back to her happy go lucky self, and the rash seems to be receding. The bad news is we don’t know for sure what happened, though Lymes is a good guess, and she’s got to be on 6 different drugs over the next couple of months – 2 weeks of a course of antibiotics for the hotspot, ear drops for the yeast infection, topical skin stuff for the rash and hotspot, and an antihistamine to try and keep her from scratching, then 8 weeks of a different antibiotic to fend off the Lymes. She also can’t swim or be bathed for the first 2 weeks and man does she ever stink from the yeast infection, plus it’s been hot and humid so she’s dying to get in the water and cool herself off.

Anyway that’s the story at present. I’ll post again if anything significant happens with her from all of this. I’m seriously considering shaving her next summer to try and help her avoid another hotspot outbreak too. She may look ridiculous but she’ll look less ridiculous than she does now with her patchwork shaved spots.

Pigs in a blanket, fakeburgers, edamame, and corn, just to mention a few of the deliciously greasy items you can get on your pie. Sign me up!