Month: November 2016

Ruby passed away this evening peacefully and surrounded by people she loved.   She ate heartily until the end – today she was eating eggs, cheese, treats, bits of ham, my mom’s favorite meatballs and relishing every bite.  Her breathing ability was rapidly declining even in the past 24 hours, so we reluctantly let her go.  I found some particularly nice photos of young Ruby this afternoon going through the blog.

April 11, 2001 – the day Ruby came home to us in Austin, TX, she was 4 months old.  The slippered foot is mine, the sneakered feet are Scott’s.

January, 2002 – Ruby’s first birthday party at Bull Creek Park in Austin, TX.  She’s in the green collar with all her littermates – I can’t remember all their names –  Rio, Hoss, Zumi were some of them…

Sept 16, 2005:  Singapore @ Chua Chu Kang.  What’s remarkable about this photo is that Edda can use her hands!  And that Ruby let Edda just bite her ear without flinching.

July 15, 2006, Singapore – Dad flew out to Singapore days after Edda’s Rett diagnosis and we walked in the parks together.

Sept 13, 2008 – Ruby and Gong Gong in Maryland trying to do laundry together.

August 18, 2007 (this date seems odd as we seem to be wearing too much clothing for August) – in Tivoli NY.  In front of a yarn store.  I love this photo…

Feb 10, 2010.  In Rockville during one of our huge snowstorms.

Ruby!  Sweetie, you’ll be missed.

Jeremy + Captain America!

We did what we could.

Now we wait.

Here we go!  Excited about tomorrow – Jeremy and Katherine spent two weekends canvassing in PA.  Neither of them were entirely thrilled about knocking on hundreds of stranger’s doors, but they did it anyways and they made a great team.  No one harassed Jeremy because, really, what fun is it to harass someone with their mom and no one harassed Katherine because she had Jeremy with her. Actually, they told me that everyone they met was very polite. Jeremy’s driving up tomorrow again to help encourage people to go and vote.  I held down the fort here for 10 long, trying and sleep-deprived days.  Stronger together!  #imwithher.

***********

This was the last day of my of my community health clinical.  Look at my classmates!  They took 75 selfies (most of them with me in them, but I enjoy taking photos of selfie attempts).  Some of the youngest ones were like – no I don’t like that one, or that one, or the other one.  Sigh.   They are so beautiful, you try to tell them over and over again.  No one listens to the middle-aged mom.

We had to do a bunch of projects together, and this random group was (by far) the easiest group I’ve had the pleasure of working with.  Super competent, diligent, super everything.  We finished one 30 page paper two weeks early as a group – just like that – boom!  When does that happen?  Like never. You want these people as your nurse.

******

I got home from clinical to find Ruby not home.  I had made the follow-up appointment at the vet for this morning at 9:40 am.  Jeremy took her there, I was at clinical.  Jeremy described as best he could Ruby’s episode last week, even though he wasn’t there.  They talked over a few possibilities, including maybe some thyroid malfunction.  So they took her in the back to draw some blood while Jeremy sat in the waiting room. The stress of getting blood drawn was enough to send Ruby hyperventilating again and struggling to breath just like last Wed night.  She was turning blue and they called Jeremy into the lab area when this was happening.  They got some steroids into her, they got her on an oxygen mask, they got her Lasix (diuretic to get any edema out of her lungs) and they were about to do an emergency tracheotomy.  But thankfully, she recovered again after about 5 min.  The vet checked to see how well Ruby was recovered by asking Ruby if she wanted a treat.  She happily took the treat.  They gave her a sedative to take an CXR (chest X-ray), and it was clear.  No cancer, no obstructions.

According to the vet, there is no rescue inhaler, no epi-pen type thing to give her the moment she has this episode.  So we need to keep her calm and cool and not going up hills.  The other option would be to have surgery – this constriction is happening because of some flaps in her throat closing shut, they would surgically tie back those flaps.  If they tie back those flaps, then she would have (always) a 25% chance of developing aspiration pneumonia (where the water she drinks goes down the wrong way – not into her stomach, rather, into her lungs).  That’s not so awesome either.  I got home from clinical and Jeremy picked her up from the vet and we read over all the papers about the surgery and thought about the numbers in the paper (23.5% of pneumonia, 60% of pneumonia cases happen w/i 14 days of surgery…etc, etc).

Finally we decided if the visit to the vet sent her into so much distress that she almost died, maybe we shouldn’t take her to the vet anymore for guaranteed more visits to the vet?  Ruby is now 15 years and 10 months old.  All her friends that we met at the dog park that were her cohort (Ulrika, Hannah and Molly) have all passed away.  She’s like 110 in dog years.  That’s where we are at now.  Maybe I’ll change my mind later.

I fed her chicken from the table tonight.  She seemed very pleased.

Jeremy came home today.  We hosted Sunday night dinner even though it was really Gene & Bette’s turn.  I ordered Chinese takeout.  Now it’s 8:15 or so and I’m going to go to bed.  Hopefully this week will be a quiet one.  (Ha!  Fat chance.)

I no longer know what day it is.  Jeremy’s been gone and back at odd times for the last 10 days.  We had a Halloween party on Monday night, we’ve been out to dinner or dessert many times this week. I’ve been off schedule with clinical which wasn’t on its usual place and time and I’ve been skipping class which helps with anchoring the week.

This morning, I forgot that Jeremy was out of town and when Edda cried out over the baby monitor at 5:30 am, I saw that my bed was empty next to me and I thought – oh, that’s so nice of Jeremy to be with Edda this morning so I can sleep in and it wasn’t until like 5 min later I remembered that Jeremy was not in the bed because he was not in the house and not even in the state and I went over to check on Edda.  Then I couldn’t remember if I could sleep only another 20 minutes until 6 am or if I could luxuriate in sleep until 7 am (or, gasp, maybe even 7:30 am) because I couldn’t remember if it was a weekday or a weekend.

Vince had scouting for food at 8:30 am.  Technically he’s grounded until election day, but I’m not sure I can make it so far as without his electronics, he’s moping around the house breaking various things by messing with them and then telling me he’s very bored.  I tell him I survived my childhood without the internet – I read books on paper and played with string (God, that makes me sound old.  Like really old.)

********

An Airstream mysteriously appeared on our street this am.  Now it’s gone.  But it was beautiful in the moment.

******

Vince / Edda / Pip together.

******

Lana and Sandra came over and we had pizza and played Pandemic – a collaborative board game in which we work together to rid the world of 4 deadly diseases.  It’s interesting, but we inadvertently cheated towards the end of the game which allowed us to quickly cure the whole world.   Next time!

Off to Harrisburg again this morning – this time until Sunday night.  Jeremy apologized for being on the road so much, and certainly I’m on edge this week for 10,000 reasons, but I assured him that we would be fine at home as there is important stuff to be done in Pennsylvania this weekend.

*******

We went out to Peter Chang’s tonight.  Chinese with a twist – like these scallion pancake balloons which my mom really was entertained by.  I can tell my parents liked this place because they took home all the doggie bags.

*******

Pip!  Nothing better to end a long week than to have a dog snuggle in your shirt with you.

I stumbled through the day yesterday, on my half-assed night of sleep.  I got some work done, I arranged Edda’s surgery and I’m still managing fallout from Vince’s quarter.  I did not do any laundry, I did not cook, I did not grocery shop, I did not pay any bills, I did not arrange Edda’s parent/teacher conference, I did not take Ruby to the vet for followup.  Edda’s surgery is planned for May 19th.  It’s the day of my nursing school graduation, but I’m thinking of skipping it and doing Edda’s surgery as the capstone of my 6-7 (?) years of work.  I’m not big on pomp and circumstance.  I think I would have skipped my own wedding if I could have.  Not the marriage part, just the white dress part (though it was a loverly – but sweltering – day).

********

Pizza was on order for dinner and Jeremy was kind enough to time his arrival into the Rockville Metro station right as we were done eating dinner so we could pick him up and drive straight to Class 520 (right next to the hookah bar) – a new liquid nitrogen ice cream place I wanted to take everyone to.

Observe – asian hipsters in Rockville.  OK maybe they are just young people.  Are all young people hipsters now?  It’s hard for me to tell.

They take unfrozen ice cream, knock some fillings in it and spread it thinly over a metal pan with liquid nitrogen running underneath it.  Then they roll the ice cream into little curly ques.

My ice cream creation:

Vince was like – I gotta come back with “you know, people” as if we – his family – aren’t people.

Together again!  As it should be.  All in one big selfie bed.

*******

A computer (Watson!) helped write this song.  I love it.

Shall we start with calm Tues morning?  Well – slightly calmer.   As soon as Jeremy left for Portland (after Edda’s brace and surgery confirmation appt which was depressing and a bummer – not that I was under any illusion that back surgery wasn’t going to happen), all heck broke loose.  Vince started melting down about his quarterly grades (which ends tomorrow), and then as I dug deeper into the situation it became more and more clear how much he was off his mark and how far astray he had led me in telling me about the school situation.  No one will ever mistake me for being a helicopter mom, I think the kids have their own lives and should fix their own problems (Edda too, in weird little ways), but it’s clear that I need to hover more next term.  I hate hovering.  I like to hover over my own crap, I don’t want to hover over anyone else’s stuff – though I guess when I hover over Vince, I could reframe the whole situation by telling myself I have the opportunity to learn about the Industrial Revolution and to read The House on Mango Street and teach Vince good study habits at the same time!  I went to bed irritated about the whole thing, but slept the whole night b/c Edda slept until 6 am (see photo above).

*******

On Wed, Vince and I continue renegotiating various expectations/privileges, getting my dad in on the discussion b/c Vince has been spending an hour a day with dad and those classes are in trouble too.   From Dad’s perspective, all the studying/prep has been going well, so the quarterly results are surprising to him.  This was painful all around – mainly for Vince and second for me.   Dad, I must say, was fantastic with Vince, kind, encouraging emphasizing that they were a crack study team and they would work together to improve – basically my dad was not crazy like me.

******

We did manage to go out for a nice dinner, Kiki’s treat, at a sushi restaurant.  I don’t think Vince had eaten all day, so the tuna rolls, miso soup, edamame helped perk him up.  By that time, the general outlines of expectations, grounding, computer/phone privileges had been negotiated, so it was a nice time.

******

Then, more craziness.  I took Ruby out for a walk at 9ish?  I had forgotten something and turned back to the house and rushed Ruby up a hill.  She has had trouble breathing for a long time, but this extra hill exertion caused her throat to close up, which has happened before when she overexerts herself.  I stopped and rested Ruby, but after about 30 seconds, I could hear her struggling more and more and I thought, OMG, she’s going to die right here on the street right in front of me.  I will say that I shoved my mouth all the way down Ruby’s throat to try and blow air into her and then I screamed my head off for help and neighbors came out and help me carry Ruby home because (I was determined) if she was going to die, she was going to die in the house and not out on the street.  We got her home – still struggling to breath.  I called Adriana from upstairs – she was giving Edda a shower – I got Vince to watch Edda.  Adriana (fellow nursing student), came rushing downstairs and helped me assess Ruby, we got the emergency vet number.  We were both like – she needs some Albuterol right now, lol. We loaded Ruby into the van and I drove to the vet.  I could hear her struggling to breath and I was still about 5 min from the vet when I couldn’t hear anything from the back – so I thought she was either dead or fine.  Thank goodness she was fine.  By the time I got to the vet, she was lifting her head, wagging her tail.  I didn’t unload Ruby, rather, I drove home because Ruby was well and, frankly, there was a whole family of people outside the emergency vet just bawling their eyes out.  I’ll take her to our regular vet today.

*****

Nothing like a surge of adrenaline at 10:00 pm to keep you up for hours (well after I got home, checked in with Ruby and all the kids and dogs and Kiki and Adriana – sent Adriana home and talked to Jeremy for 90 min), I went to bed close to 1am.  And then I found Edda stuck like this at 4:30 am. I’m not off to a good day here.  But everyone is still alive and well right this very moment.  So everything is OK.  I’M FINE.  Really.   Ahahahahahaaaaaaaa!

We showed up at Children’s at 7:45 this morning for a follow-up on Edda’s back.  This is the x-ray room.  We did need Kiki’s help to hold Edda’s feet for the full chest x-ray.  She mused that the lead apron protected her reproductive parts (which aren’t that important to her now), but left her noggin exposed to the X-ray.

Edda’s back, unsurprisingly, has gotten worse.   We are going to do the surgery soon – I think in May (which I guess is soon enough – it seemed really soon when I was in the office talking about it, but now as I’m sitting here typing, it seems far away).  She’ll be in the hospital a week, then a month at home (at least) and then three months until she’s back to her regular self.  We’ll get her another refitted brace as we set up the dates for her surgery.  Someone mentioned to me, maybe you can get some free nursing care (like through insurance or Medicaid) and I laughed.  I’ll have my RN degree by then, I’ll be the free nursing care, that’s the only way we’ll be able to get it.

******

Jeremy’s off to Portland for a few days.

*****

I bought a sewing machine.

I need to manufacture a bunch of Edda’s bibs.  For a decade now, I’ve patiently spent an hour or 90 min making each bandana bib by hand, blanket stitch after blanket stitch.  And I’d make a couple a month and for a long time, we had an abundance of bibs. But now, Edda has this habit of chewing her bibs, which makes them degrade faster (so their lives are shorter), soaks them through (which means changing them multiple times a day) and there are many places that she’s going (school, aftercare and home) where she needs a steady supply of them.  So I’m going into manufacturing.  I’ve been assured by an accomplished seamstress that this cheap, computerized sewing machine can take me where I want to go, that I can get the edging pretty much how I want it.  My accomplished seamstress friend was like – do you want me to make 40 for you right now?  I could do that…  I demurred.  She also said I was wasting money buying actual bandanas, that I should just get remnants and go from there.   Right now I’m daunted just looking at the sewing machine.  Will report back later.

We went to Kate and Ateesh’s for Halloween chili – a whole gang of boys went trick or treating.

******

We introduced Pip to Cash.

******

Vince’s Halloween costume.  He told me, after he went trick or treating, that this was his last year knocking on doors.  He said he got a lot of comments – you’re a big boy, huh?  Yeah….