Author: Doris

I’ve almost caught up with sleep from my crazy three weeks.  I think a couple of more restful days and nights and I’ll be good to go.  I don’t think I’ve yet adjusted to the time change, I still wake up at 4:30 am.  I spend a lot of time home alone with the dogs, so it’s when it’s the quietest at the house that I dream of seeing Ruby again – sleeping in her regular spot or asking for a bit of turkey from my sandwich.  How can it be?  She was always there, from the beginning.  Maxi is adjusting to her new role.  She’s nervous about it, but I’m fully confident that she’ll be able to look after all of us.  She was often jealous of Ruby and competitive with her in certain ways which I think cranked up Maxi’s anxiety.  I’m hoping she relaxes a little bit.

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The house seems almost normal again after weeks of excitement and turmoil and travel and heartache.  Jeremy’s cooking delicious dinners again.  We are talking with each other, finding our way together through a new future.

I’m excited to be eating vegetables again.

Friday night dinner @ A&Js.

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Went to RM tonight to see Guys and Dolls.  Vince has a couple of friends in the pit orchestra and the lighting team.

The production was amazing.  Great acting, costumes, lighting, music, singing & dancing.  But, OMG, three hours!  Three!  In the modern age, that is like such a long time to be in a dark auditorium.

I am exhausted.  My ability to pull together any sort of sustained, focused effort has been pretty much obliterated.  I’m heartbroken and discouraged.  Yet, the world continues on, and I with it.

Edda has half days on Thurs and Friday, but only because she’s in middle school.  If she were in high school – like Vince, she’d have a full day.  But because she’s the only middle schooler in her aftercare, the aftercare was only open the regular hours 2:30 to 6:30 pm.  So I picked her up from school at 12:30 (had a quick teacher conference (everything is going very well, Edda is having a very nice time)) and then we went to Chuy’s – a Tex-Mex place that we used to go to all the time in Austin, but now is opening branches all over the place, including Rockville.  It opened a few weeks ago here and I thought that the day after Ruby’s passing, I’d do something Austin-y and fun in honor of her birthplace.

Edda and I shared lunch (because I think she already had lunch at school).  The chips and salsa was exactly as I remembered them to be back in the early 2000s.  I’d forgotten what I had used to order, so I got some enchiladas and a crispy taco.  I saw the chuychanga on the menu, but didn’t order it.  And they had a lot of palm trees as the decor (are there palm trees in Austin?  or in Mexico?  OK a little cultural appropriation (?) here – when I see palm trees, I think LA.  When I think of Mexico, I think sombrero. When I think of Texas, I think BBQ or George W. Bush whacking weeds at his ranch. When I think Tex-Mex, I think melted cheese.)

It was fun and yummy, and at the end of the meal, some lady in a suit took over from my regular waiter and cleared our plates.  She asked if I had visited a Chuy’s before and I said yes, I used to go to the one in Austin a lot.  Turns out she was from the corporate office in Austin and then gestured towards to the Chuy’s CEO was around the corner saying hello to all the patrons.

She asked if I had enjoyed my lunch and I told her that I loved this Rockville location and it was exactly the same as the Austin location, but really, it was not really the same because it’s in ROCKVILLE and not next to Barton Springs.   And also this corporate lady told me now there are like 60 (?) Chuy’s all around the US…  The lady told me they were planning on opening 16 (! crazy) in 2017.

You know, sometimes it’s great having just one.  All I want is one.  All I need is one.

It’s before 10 pm.  Hoping to get a good night’s rest.  xoxo

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.

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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.

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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.)

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

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Vince / Edda / Pip together.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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